Shadowrealm - By Paul S. Kemp Page 0,85
at intervals held the darkness of the Shadowstorm at bay. Dead men and women lay scattered about the field. Abelar presumed their souls, raised by the Shadowstorm, had already joined the army of shadows. He hoped that Jiriis was not among them.
The dragon continued its slow turn.
Regg stood at the forefront of the company. Abelar heard his voice but couldn’t make out his words. He saw Roen and another priest moving quickly from soldier to soldier, healing with a prayer and a touch. The company answered Regg’s words with raised blades and a shout.
The nightwalker held its ground, dark, ominous, surrounded by an army of shadows.
Trewe blew another blast, and Regg shouted, turned, raised his blade and lowered it. The company lurched into motion.
The shadows keened at their approach. The nightwalker watched them for a moment, then met their charge with one of his own.
Abelar cursed.
Each of the creature’s strides covered a spearcast. The impact of its feet on the soft earth left deep pits in its wake, open graves waiting to be filled with Lathanderians.
“Turn, damn you!” Abelar said, striking the dragon with the hilt of his sword. “Faster, wyrm!”
The Lathanderians, a small island of light in the night of the Shadowstorm, charged to their doom. Regg led them, shield and blade blazing.
Trewe’s trumpet sang. The nightwalker closed, hit the company’s formation like a battering ram. Men and women screamed in pain, shouted in rage, light flared, winked out. The nightwalker crushed men and women under its feet or with its fists. Weapons slashed its huge form but seemed to do little. The company swirled around the nightwalker, surrounding it. The creature stood heedless in their midst, the black center of a whirlpool that drew into itself the light of the Lathanderians.
The dragon wheeled around at last and straightened. He roared and the beat of his wings propelled him toward the battle. The wind almost peeled Abelar from his harness.
He watched his companions, side-by-side, fighting, dying, aglow with Lathander’s light. The nightwalker reaped a life with each blow of its maul-like fists, yet none of the company around it broke, none ran—not one—and their courage chased the despair lurking around the edges of Abelar’s soul.
He understood them, then, in a way he had not before. They served Lathander, but fought and died for one another, for the men and women standing beside them. Abelar knew well the strength of feeling that bonded warrior to warrior, man to woman, father to son.
He thought of Elden, of Endren, recalled his father’s words to him—the light is in you—and realized, with perfect clarity, that his father was right.
The men and women of his company did not stand in the light. The light was in them. Lathander was merely the reagent that allowed them to shine. They were the light, not their god. And they, and he, had not burned as brightly as they might.
The shadows saw the dragon’s approach and a massive cluster of the undead peeled off from the assembled mass and streaked toward Abelar and Furlinastis.
Abelar readied his blade, and gasped when he saw the faint illumination that tinged its edges. Fallen from service, he should not have been able to light his blade. And yet he had. And he knew why. He knew, too, what he would do, what he must do, for Elden, for Jiriis, for Endren, for all those he loved.
“Ignore them, Furlinastis!” he shouted to the dragon. “Take me over the nightwalker.”
The dragon looked back, eyed him sidelong, but obeyed. With each beat of Furlinastis’s wings, the light in Abelar’s blade grew, the light in Abelar shone brighter. Abelar’s soul burned, fueled by epiphany.
He was the light. They all were the light.
Below, he saw more of his company fall, saw the nightwalker’s darkness growing, devouring Lathander’s light. The cloud of shadows, red eyes blazing, flew toward him.
Abelar watched the light in his blade spread to his hands, his forearms, his torso. It grew ever brighter in intensity. His light penetrated the shroud of shadows that wrapped the dragon.
The dragon turned to regard him, winced in the light, hissed with pain. “What are you doing, human?”
“Endure it for a time. We are soon to part ways.”
The dragon roared as Abelar’s luminescence flared and haloed them both in blazing, pure white light.
The shadows, heedless, swooped toward them, drawn to Abelar’s radiance. Darkness and light sped toward each other, collided, and the darkness of the shadows’ fallen souls was no match for the light of Abelar’s reborn spirit. In