Chapter Fifty-Three Ruhlin
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Ruhlin
The blackness filling his mind, Ruhlin quickly discovered, was not a void.
Although he could see nothing, he could feel a terrible and mounting sense of pressure.
Curiously, while it increased, the sheer dominance of the sensation swamped the pain of the stagna.
Liberated from its agonising snare, Ruhlin tried to reach for the monster once again but found he could no longer feel the fire of its rage.
Soon, in addition to the impression of being squeezed inside his own consciousness, he felt a wrenching dislocation.
The blackness around him abruptly dissolved into a swirl of myriad images.
They were jumbled together and moving too fast for him to catch more than the most fleeting glimpse.
Still he recognised people and places among the confused rush.
His father was there, so too his grandmother.
He saw Ihrkyn stringing bait lines on the shore, quickly swept aside by the sight of Sygurn pounding steel in his forge.
He searched for Aleida, finding her regarding him through the bars of his cage in her father’s subterranean domain.
The first time they ever spoke. He tried to hold on to the image of her, but it was gone, blasted away by a sight that did not belong in this parade of memory.
A man of bear-like appearance staggered back from him, eyes wide in shock. They flicked from the bloodied sword in Ruhlin’s hand to the stab wound in the large man’s chest, blood staining his fine robe dark. “I’m sorry, Einlaf,” Ruhlin said. “But it could never be you.”
No! Ruhlin thought. I did not do this!
Still, he felt it taking hold, seeping into his mind.
He saw his own memories wither around it, morphing into a vague, barely discernible melange of faces.
More alien recollections followed: battles he had never fought, seas he had never sailed, a vast cavern where great statues of the Altvar rose in impossible grandeur.
NO! he raged. This is not me!
His fury grew as the assault on his mind intensified, more and more of his own memories rendered into fog by the Vortigurn’s invasion.
Finally, he understood the king’s insane purpose.
The metal band Moyirn had set upon Ruhlin’s head was the means by which his master would seize a far mightier body, the vessel he needed to carry him to his beloved, perfect realm.
The immense cruelty of such larceny stoked Ruhlin’s ire to yet greater heights until, from somewhere deep inside, he felt it answered by the hot furnace of the monster’s will.
It came raging through the maelstrom of competing memories, a creature formed of flame, lashing its limbs at the invading images, turning them to cinders.
As the monster’s assault continued, Ruhlin felt the pressure ease, then, with a convulsive spasm, it disappeared.
The pain of the stagna closed in immediately.
But, after what he had just endured, it was, for the first time, bearable.
The blackness shattered, returning him to the tower’s roof where the Vortigurn stood, arms raised protectively and face aghast. Muscle swelled along Ruhlin’s arms, his spine stretching and legs thickening.
The twin Ventra stepped closer to him, eyes blazing as they poured their will into the stagna.
The pain would have reduced him to a twitching wreck before, but the inferno of the monster’s rage had never burned so bright.
Slowly, Ruhlin raised his enlarged hand to his head and plucked the band from his brow.
“You name yourself a king,” he said to the Vortigurn, tossing the band away. “I name you naught but a common thief.”
“Silvahk!” the Vortigurn cried, his voice rendered pitifully small by fear.
The Ventra appeared on Ruhlin’s right, joining his gaze to the sisters’ effort.
The stagna flared with such renewed agony that Ruhlin found himself unable to take his first step towards the Vortigurn.
The king continued to gape at him for a moment, then, swallowing, he began to search for the band.
“Hold him!” he demanded, sinking to his hands and knees to scour the rooftop’s corners for the circle of metal.
“Where…?” His frantic hunt came to a sudden halt when a bright blue glow flared from the direction of the city.
For a second, the Vortigurn froze, then slowly rose to turn a desperate gaze upon the vortex above.
“No…” Ruhlin heard him whisper as, incredibly, the dark centre of the storm began to pulse then contract. “No…”
Growling with the effort, Ruhlin took another forward step prompting the three Ventra to move yet closer.
He saw the strain on their faces, each rendered into quivering, sweat-covered masks.
One of the twins seemed to be faring better than the other, standing straighter while her sister began to sag.
Ruhlin turned the full focus of the monster’s ire upon the more resolute of the two.
But still, though he strove to raise his arms for a crushing blow, the stagna’s hold was just too great.
He could tell the Ventra had sensed his impotence, signalled by the very slight curve to the corners of her mouth.
It was the only expression he had seen from either of them.
Then, as her smile began to broaden, her eyes exploded into flame.
Screaming, she reeled back, hands slapping her face in a vain effort to extinguish the flames.
Stumbling away, she careened to the edge of the tower’s roof and toppled over.
The removal of her will from the stagna enabled Ruhlin to turn his head, finding Fernhyld standing atop the stairwell.
Her unbound gaze, more fierce and murderous than he thought it could be, shifted to the second sister.
Before her flames could blossom, Silvahk turned his own gaze upon Fernhyld.
Yelling in pain, she fell, hands clutching at her stagna as something blurred behind her.
Ohtera, fully transformed into her feline state, let out an enraged scream as she leaped, descending upon Silvahk in a frenzy of slashing claws and gnashing teeth.
When she stopped and stood back from the Ventra’s remains, there was little left of his torso.
His face, however, had been untouched. Ruhlin was surprised to see a spark of life in the Ventra’s gaze.
Before his features slackened in death, he regarded the woman who had killed him not with admonition, but stark and obvious regret.
With only one Ventra now controlling his stagna, Ruhlin’s transformation continued.
As he grew to tower over her, the surviving twin stared up at him with mounting exhaustion, but also implacable defiance.
This one clearly harboured no regrets and therefore deserved no mercy.
However, before he could raise a hand to her, Tremyn came rushing from the stairwell to clap his hands to her neck.
Smoke rose as he scorched her flesh, dragging her to the edge of the roof to cast her down to join her sister.
Although shorn of protectors, the Vortigurn paid no heed to them, standing in forlorn regard of the fast-dwindling storm above.
The black maw at its centre continued to shrink, though with violent resistance, whatever lurked inside casting out a vast scream of hungry, frustrated rage.
It echoed long across a city where the tumult of conflict no longer sounded.
When the scream faded, Ruhlin turned to regard Ohtera, his enlarged brows raised in a question.
“Wasn’t so hard,” she said, gesturing to the bleeding wound on her collarbone.
Amid the blood and torn skin, he saw no gleam of metal.
“Tremyn melted it enough for me to break it. There were only a few Ventra and guards to kill, the others had been called away to battle.” She revealed red fangs in a smile. “The walls crumbled.”
Ruhlin gave a grunt of understanding and turned his attention fully upon the Vortigurn.
The king didn’t cower from Ruhlin’s approach, merely sparing him a sorrowful glance before raising his gaze to the diminishing storm once again.
“Be grateful, my son,” he said, tears streaming from his eyes.
“Be grateful that you never saw it. Else you would slaughter the whole world for the merest chance you might return there.”
The voice that came from Ruhlin’s throat then was both his own and that of something else.
His previous utterances in his transformed state had been brief and unexpected.
Now he spoke with purpose. “I,” he said, resting a massive hand on the Vortigurn’s shoulder, “am not your son.” His hand closed, crushing bone and sinew to draw a gasp of pain from the king who writhed feebly in his grasp.
“Since you harbour such a burning desire to return to that realm, let me help you.”
The Vortigurn was a mere doll in Ruhlin’s hands as he gathered him up, spun him about, then cast him into the sky.
A thin scream sounded from the tumbling king before he disappeared into the dark heart of the storm which, after a few final convulsions, closed with a thunderous clap of displaced air.
The storm faded quickly soon after, although Ruhlin thought he saw some dark fragments of it speeding away, small specks of darkness fleeing towards the distant horizon.
The spiralling clouds twisted and withered to unveil a clear sky, sunlight bathing streets rich in corpses and survivors wandering in a horrified daze.
Silence reigned for a time until, as comprehension dawned, there arose a great keening from the maimed and the bereaved.
The reign of the Vortigurn was over, and this was the only song that would ever be sung in his memory.