A Darker Shade of Sorcery - - (leveled readers .txt) 📗

veils of mist, but now he saw it, smoke was billowing all around. Fire smoke.

No!

The cloying smell of burnt flesh assailed his nostrils.

Then he saw it.

He stopped as suddenly as if he'd been frozen in ice.

His heart ceased to beat, bile rose in his mouth and his stomach heaved.

His home was in ruins.

The huts of his tribe were ablaze, and bodies littered the forest floor, their blood staining the foliage red.

He arrived only to see his brethren being ripped apart by the demons.

Arantay rarely showed emotion, never even raised his voice, but in that moment a piercing scream was wrenched from his soul.

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His lips skinned back in a vicious snarl, exposing razor-sharp fangs as his face twisted and emaciated, becoming a mask of passionate fury.

He gave himself over to the vampiric side he had restrained for so long. The peaceful elf had surrendered.

A pale flash and then he was amongst them, ripping their arms off with his bare hands, rending their faces with his teeth.

The demons fell back before the red haired terror that exploded through them, cutting them down like wheat, a vampiric harvester.

So many dead. Everywhere he looked he saw fallen elves.

Since he'd turned into an Elfpire he'd no longer been truly one of them, but he still remembered. He remembered the young days as an elven boy playing with those that were now no more than husks and body parts. He cursed the demons, he cursed himself for letting it happen, and he cursed the vampire inside of him.

This madness was nothing, however, nothing to what he witnessed at the end of his rampage.

He had slaughtered them all save a small group clustered over something in the distance.

Arantay loped towards them, growling like the horrific beast he had become, blood dripped from his elongated fangs to stain the porcelain of his skin.

He felt his mind collapse when he saw what the demons were clustered over.

His body gave out and he fell to his knees, breath seemed to have left him forever.

His parents! The demons were eating the dead bodies of his mother and father.

He was paralysed with appalling horror and unbearable grief. His whole body wracked as his heart smashed his chest and his brain pounded against his skull.

And then...

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Arantay roared. The anguish and sorrow that consumed him was devoured by hatred as he saw the lone figure in the trees, watching the demons slaughter his own parents.

“Falawn!” Arantay’s mouth barely formed the word, he was beyond speech.

The two brothers looked at one another, Arantay a quivering mess upon the ground, Falawn still and silent.

“You would not understand, parasite,” said Falawn, a fanatical gleam in his eyes.

His face was like nothing human. “I am a hero. I am only saving Veneseron from its own destruction.”

Horrible, dawning realisation broke upon Arantay’s fragile mind.

His own brother had done this, he'd let the demons invade Veneseron, let them kill their entire tribe, destroy his own parents. Falawn was beyond madness, and now Arantay had joined him.

Fear distorted Falawn’s cold countenance as Arantay rushed him.

Falawn yelled and the demons rapidly left mother and father to kill the son whilst the traitor made good his escape.

But the demons couldn’t stop Arantay, nothing in this world or any other could.

The monsters converged as Falawn took off into the shadows and Arantay keened awfully. Ripping the face off one demon, then obliterating another with a single kick, caving in the skull. A twist of his hands and he’d uncorked another malformed head, a tug and he had yanked a body clean in half.

He thundered through the trees after his brother, all coherent thought vanished.

Pain wracked his body, but all he could think of was vengeance.

Before them the vast crackling portal appeared, continuing to spit demons into the night.

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Arantay screamed as Falawn plunged straight through it.

Arantay followed him, throwing himself into the demon realms beyond, stopping at nothing to hunt down and kill his brother.

*

Tarensen crashed into the trial chamber, minutes after the first demon attack. He looked frenziedly for Evan and instead found Gettelung unconscious on the floor.

He swooped down to heal the fallen master. He felt the venom inside Gettelung’s body and used his healing magic to cease its course. Abruptly Gettelung awoke.

“Where's Evan?” Tarensen commanded.

“…the Citadel…after you,” Gettelung wheezed.

Tarensen swore violently, leaping to his feet and storming from the room.

His wrath was incredible. A demon invasion on Veneseron should be impossible.

Tarensen had failed, every single Venator was in danger, he couldn’t find Evan and he didn’t know why the fiends were after him.

Most of all, his wrath was for his father.

VANDERAIN!

He roared inwardly, willing his father to pick up on it. He hadn’t heard from the Master Eternal in months.

Father, your world is under attack! Demons have invaded Veneseron!

He knew the higher ranked Reamers could take care of themselves, they always encountered demons on missions and it was what they were trained for. But the Apprentices, and especially the Novices, would be battling for their lives.

He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, let that happen under his command.

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If Vanderain was here this never would've happened, if Vanderain was here he could put an end to this.

Tarensen blasted demons apart as he passed them, breaking back out into the night.

He cast a spell on himself so he could glide over the battling Venators towards the Master's Citadel. He was much delayed however, as he kept needing to save Novice’s from danger.

By the time he arrived outside the Citadel, Urkzal and the city army had already flooded through, annihilating the immediate threat of the demons to the children.

The relief he felt at this was immediately dashed when he reached Taretta.

“Did Umbra pass through here?”

“Yes, I called after him but he didn’t hear me,” she replied.

A second later the far wall of the Citadel exploded.

Tarensen and Taretta both dived into the Castle.

The chamber beyond was crawling with demons. Tarensen waded through them frantically, spotting Sintian on a flight of stairs ahead, running towards the scene of the explosion.

The two Masters quickly destroyed the dozens of demons filling the room, but not quickly enough.

By the time they had travelled up to the explosion only the motionless bodies of Elijah, Emillia and Jed remained.

“We’re too late,” he gasped.

Evan was gone.

Taretta hurried to Jed, the other two were breathing shallowly, but Jed wasn’t breathing at all, and his head was covered in blood.

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Father. Tarensen called out desperately, seeking a connection with the Eternal wherever he may be.

They have taken one of our own; they have taken a young Venator boy.

As Tarensen sprinted to the gaping hole in the side of the castle he felt the presence he had been striving to feel for months.

Vanderain had returned.

I will find him.

Then he was gone, a second’s communication and the Immortal Master had vanished.

Tarensen prayed his father could find Evan in time.

*

Evan felt consciousness slipping from him as his head lolled drunkenly from side to side. He was just too drained, too weak.

It was over.

There was nothing he could do. Even if he did have his magic back, even if he could summon the black mist again he wouldn't. He was doing the right thing; he was saving countless lives by surrendering himself.

The forest was eerily silent as the demon bounded through it.

The only thing Evan could feel was fear.

Burning buildings flitted past, broken bodies splayed across the forest floor.

All this death, all this suffering, because of him. And Evan didn’t even know why.

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Terror consumed him as a vast demonic portal loomed into view. This was it. He was being taken to the demon worlds. To leave Veneseron forever. To leave the only place that had ever felt like home, to leave all the people he’d ever loved.

He saw rows upon rows of the demon horde following Arok as he headed for the portal, they were leaving. Evan had done it, his friends would be safe now, one life for thousands, that was fair.

The grotesque monster leapt into the swirling portal, Evan helpless in his arms, helpless against whatever lay in the demonic depths ahead.

Chapter 24- Dread Lord’s Doom

The cirrus clouds were wisps of scarlet as they raced across the ravaged sky. It was a vicious ocean of rolling, seething blood, a terrible black sun brooding among its midst.

The juggernaut landed on the other side of the portal, entering the hellish domain of his master. Evan slung, half conscious, across his scaly back.

The crimson sky was rent as black forks of lightning streaked across it and struck the warped grey earth with sickening explosions.

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A broken castle lay in wait beyond an acidic emerald river, complete with a vast bridge of bones, which was the only way to cross- alive.

The Dread Lord’s domain stood sadistically, its razor tipped turrets gleaming, whetted by the blood of those whose remains lay littered everywhere.

Evan glimpsed all these nightmarish scenes hazily as his monstrous captor headed for the hideous black castle.

Fear ripped into every fibre of his being as the ghastly images continued to assault him: A flock of giant horned bats soaring through the sky, gargantuan golems crawling sluggishly through the grey earth, and mysterious saurian things writhing in the green river below the bridge they crossed.

Evan saw more demons up ahead, hanging from the castle windows, scuttling along its black walls like giant spiders, capering across its battlements in brutal bliss.

This can't be happening. Why is this happening? Couldn’t they just kill me and have it over with. Death has to be better than what these things have planned for me.

These thoughts screamed through Evan’s mind as his eyes glazed. He longed for them to close, to shut out the horrors hounding his vision, but he couldn’t help himself, he was oddly mesmerised by the sick sights.

They passed through the castle entrance. Other monsters, insectoid apparitions and phantasmagorical forms, followed Evan and his unwanted escort, giggling or moaning with relish.

It was hot outside, like a furnace, but inside it was cold as the arctic. Evan’s breath was a misty vapour, forming into cloudy tendrils which snaked to the stone ceiling.

His captor didn’t seem to need to breathe at all.

Goosebumps broke out on Evan’s flesh. His skin ached; the cold was so vicious.

His body shivered uncontrollably, not only from fear now.

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The mountainous black walls widened, opening into a majestic chamber. The demons continued to follow, sealing off the doorway. Further demons leaped through the windows, clinging to the walls with mirth, growing in number by the second, multiplying like bacteria.

There was no way out, even if Evan’s magic wasn’t depleted. He knew, without any flicker of hope, he was going to die soon.

Arok set