INTERLUDE 1A: ONE HIDDEN VARIABLE
“There is no such thing as sin. In me all acts are holy.”
– from the Mekestan Creed
8th Orovost, 998 NE
The Shrine of Yune in Sticktown was a small wood containing a hillock, located at the end of Helbert’s Bend. The rise was no more than fifty feet high at its crest and ringed by areas of gravestones, separated into bands by knots of trees. There was a single formal entrance through the wooden fences surrounding the area, but it was common knowledge that you could get in and out a dozen other ways, if you were familiar with the place and were determined-enough to contend with the brambles tangled around the railings at the edges. Then there were the rusty nails some of those owning properties backing onto the graveyard hammered through their fences, to deter the rogues who might seek to trespass on their territory.
The green-grassed mound in the middle was kept clear, however; there were no trees, bushes or gravestones on the hill itself. And the altar dedicated to the Goddess of Hope and Peace upon the very centre of the mound was nothing more than a roughly-hewn slab of marble, wreathed in gossamer-webs of pale-flowered shoots. The priests would not arrive here for hours yet, and there were less than a dozen visitors in total at this hour.
Morning was settling in, cold and grey, dew from last night’s mist coating the untrodden grass; and, deep in the thorny undergrowth lining the unkempt borders of the Shrine of Yune, an altercation was about to take place.
It was a place she was highly-familiar with. In fact, she knew most of Mund – sure, it changed over the years, but if she could say anything about her ‘employment’, it kept her moving, kept her busy. She’d been here many times, and had hoped to find a natural seam in the dimensions to slip through; but no such luck. Somewhat disgruntled, she spent of her own personal Wellspring to open the jadeway and create the gate. She only had three more such uses left to her before she ran dry, three more of the minor miracles that made being a fairy such a convenient existence. Her skin was drying out; her gums hurt. But no matter. She wasn’t going to run out again. She’d have the cure for that today.
A powerful one, this time, if an arch-diviner didn’t spoil everything for her.
No human eye witnessed the green ichor of the planar opening, but one rabbit and a few insects scattered as she stepped through onto a robust twig. At once the odour of rot afflicted her, and the sounds of squirming maggots; her perception was her blessing and her curse. Whilst an undying nature made you increasingly resistant to some forms of nastiness as the years rolled on, most places in Mund were at the very best unpleasant – no amount of exposure seemed to help, and she’d had more exposure than just about any other creature in existence.
It wasn’t only Mund. The whole damn plane reeked. She had two cousins who lived in Mund, of their own accord, unbound by any sorcerer or oath – though admittedly they’d chosen the expansive woodlands of Treetown to make their abode. She saw it as a weakness. She wasn’t a creature of this place, and didn’t want to pretend to be. She was important. She had a job to do, and she needed her host, soon. Joining would dull the senses, perhaps even imparting some to the one who carried her within.
Joining would let her perform her function.
She had unfurled her wings, carrying herself upwind of the decaying hedgehog that was only six and a half feet away behind the shrubs, going by the squidgy sounds of the maggots.
She knew the perfect spot.
And just a few moments after she resettled herself a distant rustle heralded the arrival of her contact within the range of her perceptions.
“I thought I had the right place,” he said, once he came into view. “You’re late.”
“You’re sober,” she replied curtly. “And I’m in time.”
He winked at her, then said, “And I’m chastised.” He seated himself on the ground not twelve inches from where she perched on a leafy bush, and poured himself a drink. “So what did you see?” he asked. “What’s your new ‘master’-to-be like?”
She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could manage. Thankfully she didn’t have to tell him everything, anything, if she didn’t want to. She vastly outranked him, and she’d certainly been doing this work longer than he had – though they’d both be considered experts by an outsider’s standards, she supposed.
“Come on, Uza,” he implored, flashing her a cheeky smirk. “Let me in on the boy’s secret?”
“I don’t report to you, Urblo,” she snapped. “And speak in Mundic. Get into character.”
The faun smacked his lips after a particularly-long draught of his ever-flowing wine, declining to answer, still smirking in that highly-irritating way.
Not the kind of highly-irritating that meant you were secretly destined for a whirlwind romance with your co-worker. No, more the kind of highly-irritating that meant you were secretly destined to kill your co-worker.
He was roughly six or seven times her height, and even seated he towered over her, which just wouldn’t do at a crucial juncture like this. If she was going to command, she was going to need to take up the reins of authority.
She flew up to hover over his head, smoothing down her light-blue dress as she went.
“I only need someone to introduce me,” she said, her deadly tone matched by the cold look in her tiny eyes. “If you would rather return, I can find someone to take your place. I could also offer my comments on your performance; I know it’s been awhile since we worked together… I would give you a glowing report.”
It worked. He knew she had the ear of the only one who would matter in the end. He sniffed, and lowered his eyes. She sensed submission in his demeanour and allowed herself to relax somewhat.
When he spoke, he dropped the Etheric tongue, and his Mundic was smooth, flawless.
“So what was it last time? Ruzelra? Azrruel? Erreluz? What have you even got left?”
“It’s going to be Zelurra, and don’t you get it mixed up.”
He snorted. “I’ll barely speak to the lad, don’t worry. I know what I’m doing, and I know my own limitations.”
She scowled. “You aren’t planning on offering him your servitude, are you?” She knew it would probably make things go more smoothly in the long-run if he did, but she didn’t have to show it.
“If he’ll have me, I’ll tag along. It’s been ages since I’ve had a good go-round.”
“If you mess up even once –“
“Pah!” he snorted. “Come on, Uza – for old times’ sake…”
And this could be the last time for me…It was hard not to shudder with excitement when she remembered that.
“Fiiiiine,” she relented. “You can be Bolur.”
“No!” he choked, spluttering up some of his wine.
She cocked her head curiously.
“I hate that name. Went by it once.” His face darkened. “Did not go well. I’ll just be Olbru again. It’s been over a century, don’t you know – no one’s going to remember me.”
“Very well. Olbru, and Zelurra.”
He nodded with his eyes, his chin already thrown back in a deep swig of booze, as if to replace that which he’d coughed up.
Fey couldn’t lie about their own name to a sorcerer-with-the-power, but they could lie about another fey’s name, if it happened before they were directly asked. There were always loopholes. Keeping the same elements in her name allowed her to work around the binding-magic employed by her would-be-patrons, avoid the worst of the restrictions she’d have had placed on her… and allow her to fool other eldritches too. The new sorcerer would be able to command her just as though he were her master, but she would be able to choose the nature of her response, not just do what she was told in the moment like a well-trained puppy. She would be able to skirt around questions, while still maintaining the instinctive responses to his wishes that were natural to a sorcerer’s bound slave.
Best of both worlds, as far as she was concerned.
She cast her mind back to the vision of this new master. It’d been – what? decades? – since she’d foreseen someone so invested in using her kind.
Not that it wasn’t a two-way street. She would use him right back. Arch-sorcerers had a constantly-replenishing Wellspring – though it could cap out, their power-source never ran dry. And so, having a summoner call upon her was actually beneficial. Even the energy from the summoner which opened the jadeway was in part transferred to the eldritch – and when she joined with a host who didn’t know her real name she could fill herself up completely, anytime she fancied. Thus she had maintained her prowess down all the long centuries, though many of her peers had fallen by the wayside.
She already knew this new patron was going to fall in love in a few weeks’ time, whether or not she entered his life and joined with him – she knew the secret of his future and his failure, the events that would unfold and break him.
Magicrux Zyger. Where the lines she could find all came apart. She would delay it, help him evade it, if she could, but…
Well – other things would have to happen first, wouldn’t they?
“So, how’re your little deviants doing? Still all alive?”
She glared back at Urblo. She wouldn’t be able to reply to that without burying Wyrmblinder in his face.
“I saw Macelar, you know,” he continued in a chipper tone, “oh, fifteen years back? He was riding this poor sorcerer out in the middle of Vinnevar Forest – you know it, in Myri? – and he had ten spirits in him for almost a year before he was collected. You just don’t get the service out there…”
“I think you mean Prince Macelar,” she grated.
“Since when’ve you been a stickler for formalities? Twelve Heavens, Uza! You changed, girl.”
“Those who have survived are on assignment,” she managed to say without starting to clobber him with something. “No. Not all of them are currently alive.”
The faun looked appropriately reprimanded, and raised his drink in the air gravely in a silent salute before going at it again.
“It’s almost time,” Uzarrel murmured after a few more seconds passed.
Urblo got to his hooves, and staggered a little, but he still looked in control of himself.
“How’d you want to play it?” he asked quietly.
“I’ll be the eager one, and convince you,” she replied. “Be surly; it shouldn’t be too difficult for you. I’ll begin.”
The human’s footsteps were soft, falling into that range of sound that was still loud as thunder to her, but she knew the faun was probably none the wiser.
Her sharp hearing identified the distances, told her how far off the boy was, how she’d have to pitch her little voice to have it carry.
Another second, one more, and –
“Olbru, I demand another me-sized cup of wine.“
The quiet footsteps halted.
“Zelurra,” the faun purred, pronouncing the name she’d chosen perfectly, “you’re not the boss of me.”
He winked at her, and she scrunched up her face in contempt.
She tried to act startled, recoiling in the air and fluttering around in mock-dismay as the human’s big hand drew aside the bush covering them.
He was a tall, skinny creature, with eyes the pale green of moss. His hair was a messy straw-like mop, and he had the war-wounds of a tough upbringing right there on his face. A small curved scar on his cheek. A broken nose. An overall bedraggled look, his shoulders slumped in dejection. He had the pallor of someone born and raised in the constant smog-bank of the city, without the whiteness of skin she’d associate with one of the local mageborn. This kid worked outdoors.
His demeanour was sullen, but she watched his mood lift, wonder entering his eyes, staring down at the two fey in surprise.
The boy spoke in a shaky but curious-sounding voice:
“Olberu and Zelurra?”
She sighed, turning to let the new arch-sorcerer gaze fully upon her.
It was a start.
* * *
10th Chraunost, 998 NE
“Three kinkalaman. Five o’clock.”
”I feel them.”
She rode the psychic waves as he spliced even more infernal powers. He twisted and moved with the oily speed of a mizelikon, affirming his targets – the fifth-rank demons were on the roof of the nearest building, which had been at his back before he turned.
He leapt up at them, as dark to the eye and as light on the air as a shadow. Eight whips of red-brown wire streamed free from his claws, four from either hand – the rust-barbs that were the webs of a decrixsyru, his most powerful weaponry.
The three kinkalaman sprang down from the sloped roof to meet him in mid-air, and as he reached a height of fifty feet and the first was about to crash into him he whirled, still ascending at them.
The wires were twenty feet long now, still growing, and they severed any material they touched.
He cut through the three of them in a single helix, tearing apart their metal bodies like they were made out of cotton – their remains streamed from his whips, warped, jagged pieces of blades affixed at varying lengths to the tendrils of rust as though glued there.
He shook them loose, raining more metal down on the square, and retracted the whips before catching a leisurely hold with a shadowy claw on the face of the building. He was so light when he was like this that he had to exert himself to arrest the gentle, upwards momentum of his feet, insisting that he continue to rise; he forcefully brought them down so he could cling there upright, eighty or ninety feet up over Hightown.
He didn’t like flying, but he enjoyed this, the freedom of the floating form.
”It’s bad this time.”
She felt his eyes, tracing the lines of rubble, the insectoid creatures squirming by the hundreds in the shadows. She felt his ears, picking up the smashing of glass somewhere off in the mist, isolating the roars of a big demon from the screams of the wounded, the trapped.
”No worse than last time,” she replied.
“But worse than the time before that.”
“It’s always fixable. We’ve got wizards.”
“A thing remade isn’t ever the same, is it, really? But that’s not what I –“
“Are we going to do this all day, or are you going to slay some more demons?”
“Point taken. I’m procrastinating.”
He set his lips firmly in a line beneath his hideous mask, as he leapt off towards the things he’d spotted teeming in the devastation.
She’d known all along what he was really thinking about, of course – the demons he could claim during this Incursion. The tiny twinge of guilt he felt. But it was all about the power, and the selfishness of most sorcerers couldn’t be exaggerated. So she didn’t really feel any guilt herself; she’d seen the man’s insides, his every mistake and misgiving. She’d seen the same patterns so many times that she’d gotten inured to the whole process long ago.
It was her job. It was for the greater good.
He didn’t mow through the first-rank insect-demons with his whips or his shields, but bound them to his service instead. The zikistakram were low-enough in potency that he could control the lot of them, but it was nearly pushing his capacity – she could feel that. He’d never be one of the greatest, even if he lived to a ripe old age, wasted his powers by dying in his bed or in some meaningless confrontation. He might’ve been the senior sorcerer-champion in the city by now, but she couldn’t help the thought:
If only I could’ve gotten to Redgate, or even Dustbringer…
Whether the creatures were joined in the flesh or simply bound as minions, every arch-sorcerer’s Wellspring had its limits, even that of a champion. Though admittedly the control could get into the high three figures for arch-sorcerers, where the weaker eldritches were concerned – even four figures for a few.
Her host wasn’t one of those.
He set the insect-demons the task of finding the big thing off in the smoke, and then followed them, using their senses to track it so he could free up his own. He put his attention into the link, listening for the next place to head, once the upcoming behemoth had been dealt with.
The arch-sorcerer serving as her patron was less like himself, now. The demon powers were a part of him. He used them without thinking, abused them, even when he wasn’t engaged in a showdown. He was at his peak, or at least near to it. Soon, he’d be swollen with the power and he’d be taken. It might even be today, but the visions weren’t clear – too many diviners in his possible futures…
Uzarrel would be ready. She always was.
The official explanation was that an Infernal Incursion happened when a free demon managed to snowball into a dozen. If the citizens let the number of unbound demons reach more than that, if they didn’t stop it in time, they’d end up with hundreds, and the potential for thousands, then millions – Mund would be long-destroyed by then, but they would keep coming until the blood ran dry.
Every demon in Mund was there because it was bound, summoned and, once its service was completed, dismissed by a sorcerer who had the power or support to make the demon’s escape nigh-impossible. But the interesting thing was that the planes were not always completely separate. When Infernum drew near to Materium, an imp might randomly pop out into the world. This might happen once a month, once a week, even once a day – it wasn’t something someone could measure. The variables were changeable, subject to some outside force no one could understand.
And the same happened with all eldritches. In most places, this was not such a bad thing. A gungrelafor or gremlin or ghost would pop up in a random, desolate location, hang around their haunt for however many seconds or minutes the convergence of planes lasted, then disappear again, carried out on the planar tides.
But if a demon with the power to open its own portals popped up in a place like Mund, not only redolent with magical energies but also teeming with helpless victims whose vibrant mortal blood it could harvest, it might summon more. And if it were to just happen to summon another which was able to anchor their presence against the currents of the planes – well, they could set up shop, as it were, right here on mankind’s doorstep.
Misguided undead and fey had tried the tactic once or twice, but had proven far less effective in bringing their goals about. They were intrinsically different, and they propagated differently. No, there was a good reason the most brutal tasks were delegated to the infernal eldritches. They were made for it.
She was made for different tasks.
She watched, and waited for the sign that it was going to happen.
Two and a half hours later, the arch-sorcerer was approaching the ruins of what had once been a museum, seven floors built from fine limestone and ebonwood – now a charred and broken husk, its roof caved in, the edges of the walls still glowing and smoking where they’d been rent from the inside by some burning-power. She quickly flicked through the future-sight, knowing that she had to keep quiet; Mindbreaker was moving invisibly at her host’s side, ready to put out the telepathic call for reinforcements at a moment’s notice. Invisible or not, the fairy could of course perceive the enchantress, and kept a close eye on her. Her host wore this enchantress’s amulet, which gave her exclusive access to his headspace.
Mindbreaker’s mask made reading her facial expressions impossible – it was the champion’s body language from which the fairy would receive any tells, if the enchantress became hostile in some way.
Ahead of the two champions, a third, Winterprince, was taking up the vanguard, supported by the few zikistakram remaining to her host. The wizard fought encased within his blue-glinting armour, formed of massive chunks of ice – he was twelve feet tall and looked more like an elemental than a man. He used his arch-wizardry to manipulate the icy shell, letting him fly with grace and dodge with superb reflexes despite the cumbersome-looking nature of his creation. He’d formed part of the huge blunt ‘hands’ into ridged, serrated spikes longer and more fearsome than any sword, and armed with one in each fist he silently cut down the things streaming out of the smouldering museum towards them.
There were two groups of magisters on other sides of the building, helping to stem the flow, but their mission wasn’t to help her patron right now. The champions were going inside. The magisters had been warned to stay clear, but no such warnings were given to these three.
The place intrigued her host. What treasure-trove of demons would it hold? What could he claim inside the museum before they found and finished the summoner?
But she knew what was in there. She’d suspected, once the reports came in over the psychic channels, but now she knew. There were no other futures.
It was here that she should’ve warned him – or he should’ve asked.
The tide of demons stopped – no more were coming forth from the dark, crumbled door of the museum.
The three champions ascended a shattered staircase leading up to the archway, half-choked in fallen limestone blocks. Her host was still using the mizelikon’s shade, and floated up towards the debris-clogged entrance; Winterprince carried Mindbreaker on a wave of air.
The ice approximating Winterprince’s head split open, a crack visibly parting the translucent armour at the mouth – his voice emanated as the crack swelled and shrank.
“Are you ready?”
“By Locus, will you learn to talk like this!” That was Mindbreaker, even her mind-voice hushed.
“I said, are – you – ready?” It was more a growl than anything, and then when he didn’t get an instantaneous response the wizard snapped: “Oh, drop it!”
Winterprince didn’t mince his words; nor did he wait to form a plan of attack. The arch-wizard simply reshaped his armour into a single thin icicle, and slipped through the hole into the building. He would be visible now to even mortal eyes, where the ice about him was thinnest, the shade and texture of his blue robe not quite a match for the substance he used to protect himself.
But the eyes in there had likely been able to see him, see his heart pumping, right through the walls of the museum.
“I was ready,” her patron commented dryly.
“Come on,” the enchanter responded.
The pair of champions followed Winterprince into the building. Her host willed the two last zikistakram left from his army to follow him, but she sensed them stop at the threshold, unable to do as he’d ordered. It should’ve been a warning signal to him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
His last chance to turn back.
Her sense of anticipation grew. If she’d been loose, she’d have been doing her version of pacing – flapping violently to propel herself upwards, hanging there in the air for a moment, dropping back down, catching herself, doing it all over again…
The rooms surrounding the great central chamber had been levelled in the destruction, so when they emerged from the rubble it was into that space: a blackened, crisped shell of its former self.
Winterprince was there, armoured again in thick plates of ice, now floating thirty feet off the ground.
A white-hot chain as thick as a man’s arm, blindingly-bright to the eye, had been wrapped around the midriff of his armour; the translucent protections were rapidly melting, producing a waterfall and a cloud of steam – he was tugging, instinctively trying to pull away, but the other end of the smoking chain was – in the clasp of – of –
Her host’s fear washed over her and for a moment she could experience his reaction, as though she’d had it all for herself. It was quite a rush. He didn’t know what a dweonatar was, of course. He’d never faced anything like this –
Twenty-third rank –
And there were four of them in the museum.
The eyes of the dweonatar that had wrapped its chain about Winterprice were almost level with the archmage as he floated three storeys up – and it wasn’t even standing at its full height.
It was almost unmoving, like the huge marble statue of a hunched-over human. The arch-demon was monochrome: its robe, skin and hair were white, its eyes like luminous twin suns. And yet there was shading there, definition provided by grey lines: edges where the brilliant whiteness dimmed, delineating the curving flick of its heavy braided locks, the almost-imperceptible undulation of its vast, vast wings… and the sleeved arms, ending in the crate-sized hands which held the chain binding the wizard.
At first glance a stunned mortal might even think it seemed beautiful, but she could see through the glamour to the exquisite cruelty upon the massive alabaster-white face – and so could her patron. The coldness, the barely-restrained disdain that seemed to be carved there, as if graven in the marble of its features, such that while it might move it could never express a warm emotion, never lose the derision and contempt that twisted its lips into a snarl.
Should she? Why not?
She pulled his eyes to the other three statues, the huge demons which were standing silently at the other end of the room, looking down on her host and possibly the enchanter next to him, their faces unmoving in their permanent sneer just like the first one. She recognised that those three were wearing mantles on their robed shoulders, their hands folded in their sleeves, chains nowhere to be seen.
These three were watching the first. Interesting. Were they testing a less-experienced demon? She had no idea how this kind of thing worked. Straxi’s bunch were incomprehensible to the fairy.
Those other three probably wouldn’t need to interfere anyway. She’d never seen more than one of these at a time before, and one would be enough to challenge three champions.
As Winterprince released himself from his confines, soaring free into the air and letting his ice slough down around the now-loose end of the burning chain, she could see Mindbreaker’s head turning this way and that way, as if suddenly recognising that their telepathic link was no longer functioning.
“Mindbreaker? Mindbreaker! Oh, gods.”
Now he was realising too.
Too late.
The dweonatar drew in the falling chain, whipping it around – when the demon moved, it did so in sudden bursts, like it’d been a statue in the new shape all along – it could make several such moves each second, and cover unbelievable distances in each, yet watching a dweonatar in action was like watching a series of images being displayed in rapid succession.
In one instant the demon’s chain was swinging out in a wide arc – Winterprince’s evasive flight looked hesitant, unsure, as he did his best to process the strange, horrifying enemy confronting him – and in the next instant it was swinging at him, mere feet away –
The arch-wizard had no time even to turn his head but he stiffened, he realised it was coming anyway, just before the demon’s next motion –
In desperation her host threw everything into the shield, even letting his own go shuddering down, surrounding the armourless Winterprince in a sphere of solid blue force –
The gleaming, burning chain bit right through the barrier, collapsing the wards and fixing itself around one of Winterprince’s legs just below the knee, snaring the corner of his robe too.
The wizard’s screams split the air. At once her patron reactivated his own shielding.
The fairy could see Mindbreaker darting forwards over the broken relics and remains of shattered interior walls, throwing up her hands. Illusions were springing forth, dragons and other terrifying beasts, but what the enchantress didn’t know was that she was already in way over her head. These entities didn’t have half a chance of even seeing an illusion unless they were deliberately putting themselves out there to sense them. They might not even feel the sting of her ensorcelled daggers.
”Lera! Lerazru, can you hear me?”
There was desperation in his mental voice and she considered simply not replying, though ultimately there was nothing to be gained from shirking her responsibility in that way. The pain of refusing such a question would only be mild at worst, but she wasn’t being blocked by the dweonatar.
“I… I’m here.”
“What are these things?”
“Dweonatar.”
“… No rank?”
“Tw-twenty-third.”
“Twenty-third.”
His mouth went dry as he stared, considering his options.
It only took a few seconds for Winterprince’s lower leg to cremate, and the shrieking arch-wizard found himself free, the chain falling away again – his wound was cauterised but grievous, and somehow he was still conscious, still hovering in the air.
“Agar ugrel thanem,” her arch-sorcerer host snarled. ‘Cease your attack.’
The words rolled through the air, every ounce of his will bent on the Infernal command.
In the flick-flick of its moving statue shape, the dweonatar reached out and took hold of Winterprince’s torso in a single hand. The blue-robed arch-wizard flailed helplessly against the grip constricting his chest, halting his breathing.
Then the demon turned its head to her patron, looking down at him, at her inside him.
She felt his soul shrivelling, experienced it with relish.
“Kadis,” the dweonatar sang, in a melodic, almost sardonic voice.
‘Weak.’
It hurled Winterprince at a crack in the walls, throwing him clear out of the museum with its tremendous strength, the attitude of its pose more one of nonchalantly tossing some trash than an act of deliberate violence.
He was clipped on one of the walls as he span helplessly, but the force of the throw merely cracked the wall further, not even slowing him.
If the wizard caught himself out there, or the magisters could catch him – there was a chance that he could survive, even have a druid regrow the lost limb if they acted quickly enough. Winterprince could live to fight another day.
But the same fate would await him, in the end, as had almost claimed him today.
The dweonatar turned its head from the crack in the wall to the two remaining champions.
There followed a game of cat and mouse that lasted no more than ten seconds.
Illusions couldn’t even distract it, and invisibility was no head-scratcher for it. Within moments Mindbreaker was pinned under one immovable alabaster sandal, trapped in a depression in the shattered floor of the museum beneath the dweonatar’s foot.
Her host fared better. Although he was chagrined to find he couldn’t rip open any portals – the whole area was locked to the planar tide without a seam in sight – he could still tap the abilities of the seven different creatures he’d joined with.
But the screams of the pedheliorph didn’t slow it; the spittle of the draumgerel didn’t burn it. The chain of the arch-demon met the decrixsyru whips, the one thing in his arsenal that might’ve scratched its marble flesh, and contact with the dweonatar’s chain shredded the whips, showering chips of matter-consuming rust down all around him.
Those bits of rust went straight through his shields.
The mizelikon-shade helped him, a full fifty percent of the rust-shards simply phasing through his body – but one arm and one leg were maimed beyond all possible repair. He wore the carapace of a zikistakram instead of his own skin, but simple toughness wouldn’t do anything against this. No restorative spell would ever touch these cursed wounds, and the infernal rust just bored deeper, deeper into his flesh, devouring everything it touched – until at last it sank through the other side and started eating away at the cracked flags of the floor.
Howling, her host collapsed.
The limbs on one side of his body shredded, he pumped her for regeneration – but even if she had the healing-power, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything for him. A nethernal wound of this magnitude she could work with, maybe, but this particular infernal weaponry? No.
Not like it matters now, she reminded herself. It doesn’t matter now.
”Lera!” he cried.
But that wasn’t even close to her name.
He tried to crawl away. Fingers of stone, each the size of his whole arm, encircled his waist, hefting him up. His shields burst like baubles.
She could feel him trying to phase out, but the dweonatar’s grip wasn’t just physical.
It held him up before its eyes, and held Mindbreaker up in its other hand. She was unconscious, her short brown hair slick with sweat and blood; one of the enchanter’s dangling arms was savaged horribly, flattened to the thickness of a plate, the skin ripped and flapping.
Its head flick-flicked, from one of them to the other, back again, its shining visage brighter every time, redoubling, something that her host soon found couldn’t be blocked out by merely squeezing his eyes closed – he could see the red veins against the white light even with his eyelids firmly screwed shut, his brows almost touching his cheekbones.
It didn’t matter.
It sang again, the sheer volume of it overwhelming this close-up:
“Thanil.”
Her host shuddered; he understood the word just as she did.
‘Strong.’
”It’s going to kill me – because I’m strong? I couldn’t touch it!”
“I’m sorry, Adagor.”
There was a part of her, she supposed, that could feel a touch of the guilt; or perhaps not feel it, but at least imagine it. Imagine what it would be like to grieve for him, now his life had run its course.
But it made more sense this way, didn’t it? Was it better to just let him die in bed one day, power spent, wasted away to nothing – and for what?
No. She’d kept him alive long enough.
The demon snapped its upper body about, pulling its two captives through the air at shocking speed, just so that it might turn to look at its colleagues.
Its supervisors.
With the blinding lights shifted away, her host instinctively opened his eyes – and, with her help, he could see again.
The three other dweonatar at the far side of the room merely gazed back at the first solemnly.
She found herself using her patron’s eyes to watch the proceedings, using his breathing to simulate the kind of fear he was feeling.
One by one and each in their turn, the three watching dweonatar nodded.
The first looked back, shining-sun eyes turned towards Mindbreaker.
Within one of those flickering instants, the enchanter was removed from the demon’s hand and thrown into the air. She was held splayed out, horizontal and spread-eagled in the middle of the ruined space, fifteen feet off the ground.
Mindbreaker was fixed there, made taut by invisible forces, each limb pulled to its limit, even her hair pulled until her scalp stretched.
Now, her pulverised arm clamped in a telekinetic vice, her body being slowly eased apart, the girl woke up.
The sorcerer watched his comrade as the demon raised its free hand to perform a series of motions above the enchanter’s screaming form: dissecting motions, separating the grain from the husk.
Then it held its hand still. A white light, like that in its eyes, grew steadily in the palm that was cupped above Mindbreaker. Brighter, brighter, brighter – until her host turned away his gaze, weeping against the pity, the despair, the terror.
The fairy listened to him praying to Mortiforn one final time, praying for the magisters to enter, praying for any distraction even if it cost the mages their lives – something, anything to just let him get free; if he could take the time back, never set foot in this gods-dropped ruin –
He didn’t see directly, but he noticed by the way it lit the dweonatar up in a crimson light, finally making plain the callousness and pleasure on its face: the single moment when the white light in its hand turned blood-red, before vanishing away.
He looked back, and saw nothing but a cloud of ash, drifting slowly towards the ground.
Mindbreaker was gone.
And there was no moment of reprieve.
In just the same way, he was held taut. Agony laced his limbs, his hips, shoulders, diaphragm – and tenfold agony at his wrists and ankles and scalp, where the infernally-charged, tougher-than-human flesh was shattering under the pressure of the invisible force that gripped him. Yet she felt his eyes, tracing the wrecked shelves, the remnants of forever-lost artefacts, the museum’s treasures crumbled up in the piles of smashed glass and splintered wood. The tiny tatters of cloth and clumps of ash, all that was left of an enchanter he’d worked alongside, fought and killed alongside, for three whole years, remnants drifting senselessly down to join the rest of the destruction.
“Maybe you were right, Adagor,” she murmured to him. “Maybe it can’t always be fixed. Irreplaceable things can be lost. But it doesn’t always have to be a waste.”
Uzarrel drifted free of him, and nodded to the dweonatar.
It nodded back, its huge lips flicking back in a snarling grin as its gaze turned towards her.
Her former patron’s eyes widened in shock and bewilderment.
Her betrayal would be his last realisation.
And no – she felt nothing.
“Farewell, Hellbane.”
Nothing.
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