Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) - Jim Butcher Page 0,122

Lady’s charge had been met by a wall of sorcery from Corb and his inner circle, and they’d stopped her and her trolls’ charge, ba-dump-bump, cold. Molly’s army’s furious strike had stalled short of cutting the Fomor’s legion in twain, simply lacking the mass it needed to finish the deadly stroke. Even as I watched, I saw Winter troops being pushed back, cut down. One of the trolls fell, its head a smoking ruin, as King Corb lowered his staff and howled triumph. A bolt of green lightning shattered upon the Winter Lady’s flank. I saw it scorch flesh to bone, saw her ribs burned black, saw her stagger a step and then turn like Juggernaut, relentless and unstoppable, and keep fighting as another troll fell, nearly crushing her.

Winter’s momentum had stalled in the sultry summer night. And the Fomor legion, terrified and furious, smelled blood and began smashing their way into the forces of Winter, killing with wild abandon.

The last defenders of Chicago were falling.

And from the south, where our allies had been holding the enemy, came the long, low blare of a Jotun’s horn, sounding the attack.

I couldn’t see, through the armies and the park and the smoke, what was happening to the south. But the Jotun horn sounded again, nearer.

Our allies there had fallen. The second arm of the enemy force was sweeping toward us.

And when it arrived, they would crush whatever resistance was left.

My city was falling.

There wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t even lift a hand to make a dramatic gesture, and I only would have needed to move one finger.

The world was just too heavy.

The Titan turned toward me, triumph in her gaze, and lifted the spear she’d taken from One-Eye’s fallen form.

I’d been through a lot in my time. But I knew an ending when I saw it.

The Titan had won. The old world, the old darkness, had come back at last. Chicago would be laid into waste and ruin.

And I would die with it.

I met Ethniu’s gaze, and in that moment I knew that I probably wasn’t even going to be aware of it when I died: There was no chance at all that I could soulgaze that being and keep my mind intact. I would die mad.

Only it didn’t happen.

And I saw a truth even more hideous.

It didn’t take a wizard to see the Titan’s soul. It was already all around us. The sheer desire for ruin and destruction that filled her soul and had allowed her to master the Eye had been made manifest in the world. This was the world that Ethniu longed for. The terror, the death, the blood, the destruction, the senseless chaos—this was who and what she was. This madness was the fire that had fueled the Titans, that had made their destruction a necessity in the first place.

Blood was their art. Screams were their music. Horror was their faith.

Mortals could not stand before this.

I watched my death coming for me and wept in sheer despair.

I knew that it wasn’t just the actual pain. I knew it was also the dark will of the enemy, now unopposed by Mab’s battered will, and that that awful psychic pressure was running rampant with my emotions. I knew it was a lie.

But it was becoming the truth, right in front of my eyes.

And . . .

And then . . .

And then Waldo Butters stepped up.

The little guy appeared from behind me and put himself directly between the Titan and me.

He wasn’t an impressive figure under the best of circumstances. Standing in front of the towering Ethniu, he looked even less impressive. Even if they’d both been humans and the same height, she’d have had more muscle. Combined with everything else about her, her aura, her power, her grace, her armor, her height, her beauty, the war and ruin and mad-lit, dying city behind her . . . Butters didn’t even look like a human being. He looked more like a badly animated marionette standing next to a human being.

He looked small.

Dirty.

Tired.

Bruised.

Frightened.

The little guy glanced back at me, his face sick and pale. Then he turned to face the Titan.

And he squared his shoulders.

And he raised the Sword, a sudden white, pure light in that place, an unseen choir providing hushed music around it.

In that light, Ethniu’s armor looked . . . sharper somehow, harder, more uncomfortable, more inhibitive to her movements. Her beauty seemed flawed, harsh, as if it had been a trick of the light, and in