Wicked Abyss (Immortals After Dark #17) - Kresley Cole Page 0,50
from Sylvan, you must have heard much about my alliance.”
“From my earliest memories. You’re the bogeymen that bring about the end of the worlds. Fey children have nightmares about the savage hell demon, the fire-breathing dragon, the bloodthirsty vampire, and more. Especially the fey-slayer.”
“Did you have nightmares as a child?”
“You think they ended just because I grew up? Now my nightmares have come true. I’ve been captured by the hell demon and imprisoned in his lair.”
“I haven’t wet my ax with a Sylvan’s blood in millennia. And our archer doesn’t slay your kind indiscriminately. He only kills the royals from Queen Magh’s line.”
“Why?”
“He vowed to stamp out her descendants. Saetth is Magh’s son, and the rest of his kin are like him—evil and vicious. The whole tainted root needs to be destroyed. The worlds will be a much better place without those degenerates.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m to believe Rune only kills royal fey? And only those guilty of viciousness? Is he so infallible as judge, jury, and executioner?”
“Yes, you’re to believe that. There’s little about the fey that he doesn’t know.”
“I read in the Book of Lore that you and your alliance fought the ice demonarchy recently, laying waste to their whole army. Is that true?”
“No. Only four out of our alliance actually fought them.” Allixta had twiddled her thumbs with boredom, her magic unneeded in that conflict.
“According to the book, the archer shot a shock-wave arrow that turned bones to dust. Across the battlefield, demons writhed on the ground like worms, never to regenerate. You were no less deadly, taking out battalions with your ax.”
“That demonarchy was attempting to awaken a malevolent god who once tried to bury all of Gaia in ice. But none of you are old enough to remember that. The M?ri?r are.” If those demons had succeeded, the apocalypse would be a lot sooner than any in the Lore expected. “We warned them what would happen should they stand against us. We always warn them.”
She tilted her head, as if she didn’t know whether to believe him.
“What else have you heard about my alliance?”
“Rumor says Orion the Undoing can detect weaknesses in everything and everyone.”
True. “Is that the rumor?” Sian would never give this female information that wasn’t commonly known. And he’d reveal no weaknesses—history wouldn’t repeat itself—but then, the M?ri?r had very few. “Our leader’s powers are unimaginable. Any who challenge him are doomed to failure.”
“The M?ri?r’s base is supposed to be a dimension that moves through space and time.”
“It’s called Tenebrous, and that’s no secret.” The war room in Perdishian—Orion’s black-stone castle there—had a wall of glass through which one could see worlds flashing by.
“Many believe the M?ri?r’s dragon can incinerate an entire realm.”
Also true. “King Uthyr is a long-term visitor here at the castle.”
Voice scaling higher, she said, “Do the others visit often?”
“They rarely travel to Pandemonia,” he told her, noting the relief in her expression. She should be afraid of them. But . . . “You are currently with the M?ri?r who poses the greatest threat to you.”
She shot him another glare. “I have heard a lot about your alliance, but I could never determine one thing: what do the M?ri?r want?”
“To stop the apocalypse.”
“Stop it? You bring the doom.”
He shook his head. “We herald it. The Vertas alliance is led by N?x the Ever-Knowing, a madwoman who seems bent on destroying this universe. She foolishly believes she can match Orion in power.” Her counterintuitive maneuvering left the M?ri?r scratching their heads. If Orion was known as the Undoing, N?x should be known as the Unpredictable. “Yet so many in Gaia—including the fey—foolishly trust her. We will stop her. We will right the balance.”
“By enslaving us all? By annihilating our way of life and burning our realms to the ground?”
“By defeating and governing you. We journeyed from the Elserealms to Gaia solely for that purpose.”
“Do you intend to govern us like you did the legions who’d gathered below? I think the word you’re looking for is oppress.”
Irritation simmered. “I might have . . . intimidated them so they would return to Slaughter Gorge, to resume their interminable punishment.”
“That sounds dire.”
“It should be. They took part in an uprising against my sire, so Devel punished them diabolically.”
“How so?”
“He divided them into two armies, banishing half to an inferno on one side of the valley and half to an abyss on the other. Each of their strongholds contained a locked portal that led out of hell and a golden key.”