Chapter 126

“Charge!” He shouted, spurring his horse forward. He waved his hand, and the blue light of divine power intensified. It was the brightest he’d ever seen it – perhaps the brightest anyone had ever seen it. The power spread into the Elo’s territory melting Yesters by the dozen, but the knights that had been buried didn’t stir.

“Your Majesty, there’s too many of them!” Idith screamed.

With so great a force of Yesters, Aden knew they shouldn’t charge. But he stretched his hand out again at Idith’s protest, again raising the blue light and melting more Yesters into the ground.

Kyak!

The Yesters stopped their own charge as they felt the temperature change, but the mass behind them couldn’t stop in time. Their formation tumbled into chaos as Aden’s divine power melted countless of their number.

“Forget the building!” he ordered. The building that housed Elo’s garrison was bogged down in melee. But the Yesters that had already pushed through where the Wall of Light should have been were now rampaging through the city and slaughtering Elo’s people.

Smoke was already choking the air. It was common knowledge in the winter region that Yesters were weak to fire and heat, so people had already begun setting fires throughout the city as a desperate move once they saw the Yesters rush through the Wall of Light.

But whatever help that might be against the Yesters, it would be a little better for the people of Elo.

“Attack!” shouted Idith, leading the knights up the middle as he drove his sword through a Yester’s neck. All of Elo was a battlefield now. Aden raised his divine power again, so strongly that those in the area might have thought they’d been deposited in the warm region for a moment.

Many Yesters fell, but Aden noted grimly that the battlefield was too wide. He was barely managing to hold the power over as large an area as he was, and he could only manage that because he was Aden de Biflten. He couldn’t afford to let the battlefield grow beyond this area.

He felt a strain in his chest now, for the first time in quite a while. He was using too much diving power. But he knew his ability. He could endure it – so long as the battlefield didn’t grow.

***

With Aden using his power with such abandon, the battle didn’t go as long as it should have.

“Sir,” Idith said (as they were in Elo’s territory, this was Aden’s title among his knights). “Elo’s casualties are greater than expected.”

Idith glanced around the battlefield. It was hot – he couldn’t remember ever feeling hot in the winter region.

“Greater than expected,” Aden repeated. He and Idith knew Ilyin’s foresight. Could it have been wrong? But why now, after over twenty years?

Aden knew something else must be at play. He looked out from the battlefield, and Idith knew what he was searching for.

“You’re looking for that figure from before?” he asked. The man they had seen last time when they had come to reinforce Elo, after returning from the warm region. The one Aden had pursued, sword in hand.

“It feels as though he would be here,” Aden said. It was a hunch, but that figure seemed the only variable to Ilyin’s dreams.

He wiped his sword clean, thinking of what Ilyin had said. A strange figure, like a man from the back, but with eyes of pure violet.

It put him in mind of Ilyin’s own twinkling eyes. Those eyes that seemed to carry the light of the warm region.

They were violet eyes as well . . . a connection Aden didn’t care to make.

“Idith, clear the battlefield,” he said. The Yesters that remained had lost their numerical advantage. There was no way they could hold with Duke of Winter here. Unless an additional army of them arrived, there was no point in Aden continuing to strain himself with his divine power.

“Sir?” Idith asked.

“I’ll be right back.”

Idith gestured at a few knights to escort him. The battlefield was still chaotic, so Idith himself was still needed here.

Aden noticed the knights following him. They were the ones that went to warm region with him, ones he could trust. He moved on quickly.

“Where would he be,” he muttered.

His hunch wasn’t as certain as Ilyin’s foresight, but after trusting it in so many battles, he was nonetheless certain of it. The stranger was definitely here somewhere. He readied his sword.

And just outside of Elo’s territory, he found what he was looking for.

Ilyin was right. He looked like a human, but he wasn’t one. The wind was fiercer here, and only the Duke of Winter could walk in it in such thin clothing without succumbing to the cold.

He squinted. The eyes truly were pure violet, with no humanity in them at all.

“Certainly not human,” Aden mumbled. He knew it the moment their eyes had met.

What was in front of him was a monster, like all the others he’d fought over the years. And he knew of a monster that looked human, one that had disappeared long ago in Biflten.

“A Milton,” he said plainly, and the thing in front of him reacted to the word.

Duke of Winter.

It was definitely the voice of a monster. Not spoken aloud but sent directly into his mind.

Aden raised his sword, but the Milton moved quickly. It kicked the snow on his feet and quickly moved back, as though trying to gain distance from Aden and his knights.