Battle Ground (The Dresden Files 17)

The great wheeling death machine that was the Wild Hunt rolled over the Fomor legion with frantic abandon the whole while, too frenzied in its lust for blood to care which particular targets it struck, terrifying in the absolute random fatality of its selections.

And standing ten feet off, facing away from me, the Queen of Summer, Titania, faced Ethniu, eye to eye, standing as tall as the Titan. The Summer Queen wore leather armor, all in flickering shades of green, like sunlight passing through fluttering leaves on a warm spring day. Her silver-white hair was braided with ivy and flowers. She carried no weapons, and she stood alone—but the legion of the Fomor, it seemed, could hardly bring themselves to so much as look at her, much less approach.

Titania’s voice rang into the night like a silver bell. “Clever of you, Ethniu, to attack my sister at midsummer, when she is at her weakest.” A growl of thunder added punctuation to the end of her sentence. “But it was shortsighted to assume she would stand alone.”

There was a thrumming in the air, a quivering sensation of nauseated terror that went through me like a bullet, and suddenly the silver-grey eight-legged steed whom the legends named Sleipnir thundered out of the night sky, its hooves digging up mounds of earth to arrest its momentum. The great horse reared, kicking the scorched air with all four forehooves, and the terrible shadow upon its back lifted a hand that suddenly clasped a bolt of lightning.

When the Erlking landed, he did so in total silence, despite the heavy faemetal plate he wore over his usual hunting leathers. He landed in a crouch, flanking the Titan opposite the terrible rider, and drew his antler-handled hunting sword as he faced Ethniu.

I wanted nothing at all to do with this fight, and I started trying to worm out of the immediate blast radius without being noticed.

“I give you this single opportunity,” Titania continued. “Withdraw from the mortal world. Return to your sanctuary. It will end here.”

“As if you could offer or deny me anything I chose to take,” Ethniu snarled. “Petty little demigod.”

And with that she unleashed the power of the Eye.

Titania was waiting for it.

The torrent of destructive fire struck out at Titania—but rather than trying to oppose or endure it, she did the opposite. She spread her arms wide, rolled at her hips and lower back in a peculiarly dancelike motion, and rather than striking her, the torrent of energy bent and twisted, sending all that heat and hate spiraling up into the night sky.

Up into the sky that had, only a moment before, been full of freezing air and sleet, courtesy of the Winter Lady.

To call what happened next “rain” is something of an understatement.

Great, grinding thunder raised its voice in a throaty roar, and the air turned to falling water.

Water and magic are awfully finicky around each other. Enough running water tends to disperse and ground out magical energy, so much so that entities whose existence most depended on magic dared not cross even a running stream.

Titania didn’t so much summon a thunderstorm as she created an improvised waterfall.

Down smashed the rain so thickly that I had to cover my mouth with a hand in order to be able to breathe.

And I felt the shift in power happening.

The terror of the city and its hovering magical potential in the air began to melt away like a sandcastle before the tide. The water sluiced down over the city, washing the air clean once more. Magic began to bleed out of the air and sink back into the earth, drawn along by the heavy rain.

It couldn’t come down that hard for very long. It was maybe thirty seconds. Definitely no more than sixty. And then the rain abruptly stopped, as if a switch had been thrown, and only a few light, sporadic raindrops continued to fall. The city went from a roar to almost complete silence. The quivering reservoir of concentrated dread, ready to be collected and used, had withered and melted away.

And with its energy supply abruptly missing, the sullen fire of the Eye guttered and nearly went out.

Ethniu let out a short, sharp exhalation and lifted her left hand to the Eye.

Titania lowered her face, gleaming from the flood, and focused bright green feline eyes upon the Titan, her expression as set and immovable as the earth.

Sleipnir screamed and reared again, the great beast straining against the reins, eager to fight, while the blue-white fire of the living lightning in the hand of its great rider cast flickering nightmare shadows upon the ground all around them.

The Erlking gave her a wolfish smile.

And then the immortals went to war.

It happened fast. Everything was a blur of motion and energy. Sounds tumbled one upon another so rapidly that it was impossible to pick out or identify any given portion of it. Lights flashed so brightly that I had to cry out against the intensity.

None of them bothered with physical weapons. They all threw Power at one another. They all had been using it for century upon century. They were all better than me, with minds capable of shaping and forming multiple workings of Power simultaneously. I couldn’t have tracked that duel, not even if I’d been at one hundred percent and had signed guarantees of safety. Participating in it? Laughable.

There was so much power there that my Sight started picking up images, like a light so bright that it hurt even through closed eyelids. Each of the combatants blurred, as if multiple layers of the same image had suddenly started performing multiple separate actions. I was struck by the sudden overwhelming perception that I was looking at potential realities, possible realities, all overlapping while immortal minds fought to see into the future and adjusted and counteradjusted their actions based upon what they could perceive there. So not only were they all doing multiple things at once; they were all thinking through every available possibility. That was like . . . simultaneously playing an entirely mental game of 3-D chess while juggling a running chain saw, a lit torch, and a bowling ball, all while balancing on a slack rope.

And then they took all of that vision and Power and potential and condensed it into a single instant. When they cut loose, the immortals fought one another all at once: They brought the totality of their being to the table, expending their energy all in the smallest area and time frame possible, concentrating their enormous Power with inhuman precision.

So there was light that tore at my eyes and sound that clawed at my ears, a nauseating ripple in the air caused by so much energy being unleashed in so small an area, and a clap of thunder.

And then there was a smoldering crater in the ground where the four of them had been standing faced off against one another.

Where the Erlking had been there was only a burned shape. Half of it was a skeleton, charred black. The other half looked like a lot of melted metal and cooked meat.

Sleipnir lay on his side, stunned, several yards away. Beside him lay his rider, his dark cloak and hood smoldering.

And Ethniu stood in the center of the smoking crater, her feet planted wide and confident, holding a limp, apparently unconscious Titania by the throat, the Summer Queen’s feet dangling six inches off the ground. Ethniu’s Titanic bronze skin-slash-armor had been scorched but not dented. She was breathing hard and looked unsteady, her eyes wide.