MARBLE 6.6: BATTLE IN ETHERIUM
“Retaliation is a form of worship. As the scholar of Locus submits her text for peer review; as the healer of Wythyldwyn seeks aid in mending a grievous wound; as the chronicler of Chraunator argues her point; so is the warrior whose blow invites riposte.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Swordfaith Lectures’ recordings, Urdara 966 NE
“Very good!” Killstop blurted psychically.
Before I could stop her, before anyone could say anything, she raised her mask slightly and tipped a healing elixir down her throat.
She vanished in a burst of green foam.
Damn seals.
“Take a leaf out of your little friend’s book, Feychilde, before you take a leaf out of Leafcloak’s, Sunspring.” Winterprince soared up into the air between two of the gigantic reeds, forty feet up, surveying us. “Killstop’s got me shocked – the girl’s actually sensible. Why not follow her example? Come back to Materium with us. You’ve led us a merry chase. It’s over.”
“You’re all just dancing to Lovebright’s tune,” I replied. “Fairness, Star? And you – you really think my neck’s got your name on it, don’t you, Winterprince? That couldn’t be further from the truth.”
He floated too close to my shield – my force-blade chipped the armour above his right knee, knocking him away slightly, and he quickly retreated back within Netherhame’s shield before I could press forwards.
“Feychilde…” Stormsword said over the link. Her lightning was clearly fully-brewed; she’d stopped collecting the stuff in, and her voice was tense, taut as a bowstring at full draw.
Ready.
“We’ll be as invisible as I can make us, as soon as it starts,” Spirit said. “They’ll be able to pierce parts – Wilder, you gotta back me up now!”
I held my breath for a moment. There was no way for me to check whether he was right, check whether Wilderweird was doing his bit – and seeing us disappear would force their hand.
Good.
“We have no way to cheat without Killstop,” I reminded them. “Once her spell fades, they’ve got us. They’ll have minutes to go at my inner shields – they won’t hold. We can’t get at their amulets –“
Valorin, Netherhame and Shallowlie came together and started a weave; and they got to work weaponising it immediately. With three of them, the multiplicative effect of weaving – it’d be ten, twenty times stronger than anything I could conjure.
But the arch-sorcerers weren’t spreading the barrier around us to contain us. They were only fighting at half-strength, robbed of their natural ingenuity, their resourcefulness. Robbed of the true desire to fight, of their champion’s hearts.
Or maybe they were just too afraid of us to spread out too far, thin their forces.
I looked away, regathering my thoughts.
“– we can’t get at their amulets without defeating them,” I finished. “They have their druids. We have to assume the… dragon hasn’t barred them from healing each other. We need to fight them – for real. Sunspring – if you can heal their sorcerer’s marks away…?”
“Not at a distance; don’t you know, it’s taken as ill-will, and the seal of a sorcerer is different to…”
His voice dropped away, and I didn’t prompt him.
It was happening.
They made their move, transforming the hypothetical into the real, causing what I thought of as my battle-rage to seep into my mind.
Focussing my thoughts.
Starsight and the two arch-diviners in grey behind him – Bookwyrm and Bladesedge? – took off, one of them going right, one of them left – Star himself ran over my shield, racing atop it, his knives flashing.
Shield Twelve was failing – failed – fell.
Starsight dropped a few feet in the air as the first layer of the dome beneath him evaporated.
Winterprince, Withertongue and two arch-wizard magisters took up lofty positions and started unloading spells, frost, fire and pink lightning rippling out from their hands in clouds and rays and waves.
Shield Eleven.
Fangmoon, Wanderfox, Petalclaw, others – they took their accustomed shapes and swelled, barrelling forwards, hundreds of tons of muscle striking my fortifications.
Ten – Nine –
And then their enchanters’ invisibility went to work, rippling out across them, until there was nothing left except the spell-effects of the wizards, the odd glint from a diviner’s knife as they went hurtling around us, the pressure on the shields. Here and there, I could glimpse the robed bodies in motion, the odd flash as Spirit (and possibly Wilderweird) counteracted the spells of their opponents.
Eight –
Our foes were coming forwards to meet us – I could see the weave that no invisibility-spell could hide from a sorcerer’s eye, expanding –
“Now, Storm!” I cried.
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice small, soft.
The eruption was anything but.
She thrust herself into the air, threw up her incandescent hands and screamed.
It poured out of her eyes, her clothes, everything.
Sheets of pink light covered the world, blackening the vast reeds, catching arch-diviners and arch-wizards that were beyond the sorcerers’ weave, sending them reeling, tumbling from their perches. How harmed they were I couldn’t tell.
Along with Em’s pent-up aggression, we had one other advantage, here in Etherium.
My peers were not fans of the fey, were they?
Sarcamor and Sarminuid I settled near to the Lords of the Arrealbord. I brought through my scorpion and had it grow to maximum size, Sir Stinger backing up Sunspring as the gorilla pulled himself with his massive knuckles in the direction of the enemy druids. At the same time I opened a portal full of chattering golden squirrels in the general vicinity of their cadre of enchanters, then reached into crimson fire beneath my feet and pulled Khikiriaz through, carrying me up into the air.
The red-furred ikistadreng loosed a blood-curling scream of defiance when he saw a flash of what we were dealing with, and he reared up. I wrapped my legs tight about his flanks, as much to ensure he stayed on this plane as to stay atop his back.
“Khalor!” I commanded.
When he lowered his huge antlers, charging, I could see over his head the weave before us. I left behind most my barriers, to defend the others, carrying only my circle and triangle. Enough for me and my mount.
The others were fighting behind me – I could hear their cries, mostly psychic rather than physical, as they entered a battle against overwhelming odds.
I couldn’t listen.
Focus.
I gritted my teeth, fixed the shields, and set every force-blade in front of me, a pulsating blue spike, like a thousand lances conjoined into one –
I could’ve unfolded arms of force, tried to pin the weave in place to allow me to strike it – but that wasn’t how this was going to work. It was a weave. It worked on resolve. Something mind-controlled slaves lacked.
When I rode the hell-beast right through their weave and trampled the flickering bodies of Valorin and Shallowlie, I felt the inrush of energies as a group of our foes were sucked away from this plane. Either Min or the magister had lost consciousness, lost connection to their power, and with that loss those who bore their seal had been whisked away.
I couldn’t see Netherhame – she must have put everything she had into the weave. Nonetheless, I could hear a burst of the sound she made, her wail of anger; and when she reacted I got only a glimpse of the obscenely-huge shadow falling upon me, only a snatch of the zombie giant’s sickening song, before it struck me.
My triangle burst at a single blow, and Khikiriaz’s head caved in, antlers bent; he toppled, dying, and I went down with him, my leg trapped beneath him.
My leg turned to mush beneath him.
A flick-flick of warped invisibility revealed the zombie giant raising its dirge-chanting fist, comprised of unseeing, warbling blue corpses –
I raised my hand as though to ward it off, gasping –
It struck my circle-shield, hammering me and my dying demon into the dirt, and I saw the lines fraying, stars bursting even as I was rebuilding them – I dismissed Khikiriaz between gestures, an action that at once both relieved and tortured my useless left leg –
Zel was hanging there in the air beside the zombie giant suddenly, contorting strangely, and it was only as Spirit’s efforts washed across us that I realised she was actually standing on top of Netherhame’s head, burying the tip of her knitting-needle sword through the eye-slit in the sorceress’s mask. Trying to make her release her grip on the giant.
“Princess!” the fairy yelled at me over Netherhame’s staccato screams.
Of course.
Jerking with the pain, I twisted my arm, pulling through portals – the zombie giant swung its other fist down at me to finish me –
Leaping through the jade mist from which she was birthed, my unicorn brought her glittering horn into contact with the towering hulk of cadavers, headbutting its descending knuckles –
“Esae!” she cried fiercely, joyously, a word probably best translated simply as, ‘Yes!’
Whatever Gilaela did, it burned up the zombie giant’s arm, turning the hundreds of bodies up to its elbow into dust. This seemed to undo a portion of whatever magic held it together, loosing the deluge of cadavers on top of me.
I preferred a rain of illusory puppies, but at least the rain of corpses couldn’t penetrate my shield as they cascaded down on top of me; they couldn’t bury me alive. They were still squirming around, teeming over my force-barrier. Though their strength was vastly reduced when almost separated, strung out like a string of pearls on a snapped necklace, the weight of them was immense. Too much –
“Feychilde!” I heard the unicorn’s concerned voice on the other side of the body-pile covering me.
I opened my mouth to command her –
And the zombies all over me were swept aside in a storm-wind, flickering back to Nethernum once the tempest separated them from each other.
I could see the glowing otherworld sky – and I could see –
Winterprince descending upon me.
His swords crashed into my shield, again and again, and a hail of sharpened ice-shards drove at me from all angles. A burst of them wounded Gilaela, forcing her back whinnying.
“Are – you – sure?” the wizard snapped as he shattered my stars, sent my blue ring shuddering to a halt.
Was I sure my neck didn’t have his name on it?
That was what he was asking me.
Sunspring went reeling past, shaking the ground underfoot – he was even bigger than before but his foes, not much smaller, were all over him: a silver-black tiger, a blue-brown rat… I wasn’t getting help from him.
Zel was stabbing Netherhame’s hands, her wrists, working at the tendons that let the arch-sorceress control her fingers. No help there.
My last star exploded while I was fumbling with my demiskin but my other healing elixirs eluded my fingertips, and I looked up in terror.
“Back – off me!” I cried, lashing out with a force-spike at the arch-wizard even as he pressed his advantage.
It was no good. I was too weak. My force-spike couldn’t drive him away, never mind pierce his ice armour.
I looked aside, doing my best to control the energies, summon my last reserves.
Our foes – visible, no longer flickering – my satyrs wrestling with Fangmoon; Stormsword sparring with both Elkostor and Starsight; the Arrealbord lords and Timesnatcher still safe inside their shields –
Could I draw on that power?
It was only then that I realised our enemies’ invisibility wasn’t reactivating; this wasn’t just a lull. It had truly dropped off. Spirit was keeping up his end, it seemed, or –
A tide of golden squirrels came to Zel’s aid just as Netherhame’s shields sent the fairy flying – they swarmed atop the sorceress, hiding her from my sight, burying her wards and all beneath their shining rodent bodies, rolling her across the grass.
What they’d done to the enemy enchanters I was unsure…
I looked back at Winterprince as he broke my starless circle – and brought my final eldritches to the front of my mind.
The arch-wizard was grinding laughter.
“You are mine!”
He launched the killing-blow.
He did it with his own hands. He wasn’t going to bring a lance of ice up under me. He wanted to do it himself. Feel the life leave me, as it’d left the young heretic.
This wasn’t all the dragon. This was him. His nature.
And it cost him dearly.
Xiatan, my treeman eldritch, I brought through right between us, even as Flood Boy appeared ten yards away.
The shining frost-blade bit deep into the dryad’s bark-flesh, far deeper than any ordinary sword ought, certainly one made of cold water; and, probably rather surprised by both the jadeway and the sudden attack, Xiatan released a shockingly human shriek and simply clobbered the ice-clad wizard with his branch-arms.
About half a second later, as Winterprince span away into the air and started gathering twin nimbuses of orange heat just beyond the tips of his swords, Flood Boy’s namesake arrived.
A tide of wine came like a river through a burst dam to slam into the arch-wizard, slapping him down to the ground, his fires – at least for now – extinguished in a whoof of explosive vapour.
I looked across at the faun and gave him a weak thumbs-up. The little guy’s eyes were wide as he played his thrumming tune and he didn’t look at me.
He’s… scared, I realised.
A huge scorpion-pincer, bigger and heavier than a horse, landed not five feet from me. I felt the impact as it rocked the ground, but it was a distant thing, somewhere beyond the pain.
My leg.
“Help!” Sunspring gasped over the link.
“Diviners are on him!” Em screamed.
Winterprince was rising through the faun’s flood, burning it away into steam as he soared across the intervening space –
Was this unconsciousness calling me? I couldn’t pass out.
I watched as Winterprince reached Olbru and put his now searing-tipped blade through the faun’s tiny chest, and I couldn’t move my arm, couldn’t move him away… it was too late, anyway…
If I pass out, they all enter Treetown. She could have… have anything there… waiting…
Em…
I couldn’t move my hands – they were cold – but I could move my jaw. Bite down on the lower lip.
Draw even more blood.
He killed Flood Boy.
It wasn’t enough. The pain wasn’t enough. I was slipping. There was a velvet blackness awaiting me – it was unconsciousness, it was death, it was suicide –
I watched, through blinkered, closing eyes, as the arch-wizard raised his foot and savagely lashed out, the massive translucent boot thrusting into Olbru’s face, kicking the faun’s corpse clean off the sword to lie in the dirt.
Tiny green leaves of energy rose from the dead faun’s skin into the air, like luminous snowflakes falling in reverse, his spirit breaking apart as the plane swallowed him up.
He… kicked… Flood Boy’s… corpse…
I stared on, as he flicked my trusty faun’s blood from the blade.
There was another well beneath the well. There was fire beneath volcanoes. An ocean of it.
I might’ve been unconscious, but now I could feel my shield as it brought itself shuddering back into reality.
I flopped about, onto my chest, the left leg non-responsive – but it was mercifully pain-free, doing little more than tingle now.
That was probably a very bad sign.
Drop on it!
I forced my hands into claws and tried to crawl towards the wizard, my stars buzzing, made of pure will –
“Oh no, boy,” he snarled, whipping back to face me.
He pointed his sword; the fire flowed, and it was all I could do to deflect the attack.
I was helpless as together we ignited Xiatan, not three feet from me. A gush of lava consumed the dryad layer by layer, then it seemed to bubble up inside him, smoke and incandescent fluid pouring out of the cracks of his eyes and mouth.
The treeman collapsed into smouldering ashes next to me.
“I said – you – were mine.”
Fingertips of frost clawed their way through my shield. Head bowed, I awaited the end, however it came. I couldn’t see his blades. Only sense them as he broke my defences.
Broke me.
I saw the pink lightning through my closed eyelids, though.
“You!”
I’d never heard Stormsword sound scarier. It was the voice of a tornado that struck the battlefield, struck Winterprince.
And then she was drawing me back with her wind-magic, sliding me across the ground away from my would-be killer, even as she drew closer, tagging in for me.
Thank… you, I tried to think at her, but it didn’t go through. Does that mean… I have to handle Starsight?
I collapsed forwards onto my face, letting her pull me – letting go…
But as she crossed over me, something fell unerringly into my fingers, nestling itself in my grasp –
The chain. Her healing potion.
I lurched onto my elbow then collapsed, face near to my hand – the fingers were still cold, so cold, but I could draw out the stopper with my teeth –
“Avaelar!” Zel was shrieking. “Help Timesnatcher!”
Help… Timesnatcher…
My sh… shield… gone…
I poured the first drop of the healing elixir, missed my mouth; I thrust my neck forwards desperately, put out my tongue –
A boot smashed into my jaw, crunching down, shattering the glass between my fingers and snapping my bones like kindling.
“We can’t be having that, I’m afraid,” Starsight intoned.
He leaned down, his minty breath in my nostrils.
I tried to meet his eyes, but all I could make out was the gleaming star of his mask.
“I’m sorry things went this way,” he said softly, “but you stepped off the path, Feychilde. A thing ill-destined is better finished swiftly, nay? Else it become an abyss to drag down all in its wake.”
He did something to me and I was on my back, spread-eagled.
The glitter of a golden dagger-blade in his hand as he stood over me –
“Ironic. You talk way too much.”
Killstop was behind him – right behind him – and in her hands, her own luminescent dagger, and the sliced ends of the chain about his neck.
How…?
He reacted, she reacted – I couldn’t tell. When the motion-blur resolved, they were standing side-by-side for a split-second before running away – together.
But I knew for certain when I felt a druid’s magnificent healing and energising spells entering my body that the tide of the battle had turned.
I sat up, straightened my mask, and peered down at the tremendous blue condor crouching over my leg. She was taking a spray of lightning from an arch-magister with her wings, protecting her head, and just ignoring the damage as though it were nothing. The feathers that were withering away were being replaced just as swiftly as they vanished, I saw. The pain didn’t even appear to bother her.
I expanded my shields around her anyway, cracked my knuckles, and smiled.
“Thanks, Glimmer.”
The druidess nodded to me, and I looked about, silently praising Yune.
Timesnatcher – his robe was withered away, touched by flame or lightning, but the flesh beneath was pink and he’d been placed in a position of repose. Someone had seen to him already.
The politicians – they were huddled together, shieldless, with Lord Haid crouching protectively over the other two, a look of never-before-experienced horror on his bulbous face.
All three of them, alive.
Shadowcloud, dipping and weaving through the ethereal sky like a ghost, created a shell of lightning around the enemy wizard who’d been throwing spells at Glimmer – a shell which only seemed to absorb what his foe drew in and threw out.
A moment later it congealed inwards, frying the magister where he floated; Glimmermere left my side, catching the magister, taking him under the power of her magic.
Killstop had brought Zakimel – that was what had given us the edge. Now, accompanied by Starsight, they were putting things right. Direcrown was with them, and he was riding a winged demon – it was the size of an elephant but it appeared very much like a small dragon, with savage-looking rust-red claws and teeth, black-metal wings and scales. It only differed from a young drake out of the story-books, as far as I could tell, in that it possessed three long, tapering tails. There were spell-effects in different shades and hues crackling about the trio of barbed tips, waving dangerously in the air.
The sorcerer had crossed the field to help Stormsword take Winterprince apart, and I felt a flush of pleasure watching the ice being torn from the wizard’s limbs.
Winterprince’s amulet had to be inside there somewhere, right? Had Lovebright gotten him to expose one of his arms for him to take the seal? There was no other explanation.
It felt strange to imagine a living man inside the ice armour all of a sudden – but the armour layers were so thin now that I could see him, properly, for the first time. He was drowning in a deluge of magma spewed straight out of my girlfriend’s hands, drowning in a deluge of blows from some of the most-fearsome demonic talons I’d ever seen.
But he was a man in there. A mage clad in a plain blue robe.
I had to do it – it would be glorious.
I leapt up, ran over to them, and cried out: “Enough! Take pity on the poor guy.”
Em looked at me; Direcrown murmured in Infernal to his mount; and then, just as Winterprince staggered back into an upright position and raised his head defiantly, Killstop visited him.
She smashed her fist right through the crust of his frozen exterior, then pulled back, clutching his pendant; a second later she held the amulet up in the air, swinging it before his still-ice-masked face.
“Thanks, your Highness,” she chirped – then vanished, off on another errand.
Winterprince, far smaller in stature than was normal, shrank down further into himself, curling up and sitting down on the grass.
He put his head between his knees, unmoving, silent. I could now see right through the thinnest ice leg, the one that contained no flesh and bone below the thigh. Where something awful had wounded him, irreparably.
Strange, that my words had been so wrong, and so right. Having fun at his expense wasn’t glorious – it was stupid. Pathetic. But now I did pity him. Whatever I thought of him – whatever part of it was or wasn’t the dragon’s doing – he was a champion. He was crippled, because of his commitment to the cause, and yet he didn’t retire – he kept on fighting. He’d beaten me. He was strong; he deserved his pride.
And today he’d been puppeteered into a shameful battle, then had all his protections whittled away to nothing, for everyone to see.
Despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him – not now.
He kicked Flood Boy’s corpse off his sword.
As I surveyed the smoking, spell-blasted clearing between the reeds, I realised it was over. Killstop and Zakimel had used their superior talents to bring the other arch-diviners to heel first, then used them to emancipate the other combatants. A number of magisters were helping the three politicians to their feet, checking them for injuries.
There were over two dozen entities, eldritches included, scattered about the battlefield. Many of the human faces showed panic, disgrace. They were receiving the pertinent information from Spirit or someone, it seemed.
My satyrs had survived, though they had champions’ blood up their arms. My sylph was seeing to my unicorn. Zel came through unscathed, too; I saw her, fluttering around the almost-completely dissolved remains of Olbru.
Stormsword was before me suddenly, and I hugged her, whispered my gratitude for the last-second rescue.
“Zat is vot I’m here for,” she whispered back, smiling broadly as we parted.
I looked across at the others. “No fatalities?” I yelled.
“No fatalities?” I repeated telepathically, just in case someone had gone too far to hear me.
Then I got to sigh in relief at the sheer number of dubious confirmations. No one knew for certain, even out of the diviners, but the fact no one thought they saw a body lying in front of them was definitely a good start. I couldn’t sense any, though if some had slipped back to Materium –
“I think we’re all okay,” Killstop hedged, over the psychic channel.
“What in Twelve Hells happened, Killstop?” Spirit asked.
“This is beginning to Bor me.”
It took me a second –
There was a pause, while Spirit parsed what she said, then he piped back up: “No magisters. Pruned the link – just us now. What happened, Tanra?”
“I found her charm under the Ceryad. Destroyed it. Once I did that, it was easy to get Zakimel on board. She’s panicking, you see. She’s decided to stop spending her forces, go back to the long game… Something like that. She wants to pick our minds back up! If she can make us forget this ever happened…”
“What do you mean, about Zakimel?” I asked, feeling worried.
“What do we do now?” Shadowcloud called down.
I’d been staring at Killstop, her back to me as she bent over Timesnatcher, but now I moved my eyes to look up at the wizard. His grey robe with the yellow lightning-bolt was rippling in the breeze of his power, his misty mask and leathery gloves all in place.
He’s back, then? I thought in wonder. The reports had all indicated he was destined to… well…
No one else replied to his question directly, breaking off in small groups and muttering.
“We have to get her,” I called up to him.
“We will finish this,” Stormsword said.
I felt a tingle in my fingers, and looked down at Em’s hand in my own only to see a little trail of pink electricity still running across her knuckles.
I smiled at her, and she smiled back.
Drop it. This dragon has to die.
Killstop and Zakimel moved towards the centre, oddly in concert, almost as though the seeress was doing her best to keep on top of the seer. Behind them, Starsight, Bookwyrm and Bladesedge were all doing something to Timesnatcher, crouching down and waving their hands rapidly back and forth, as though they were tickling the air just above the fallen hero’s unconscious body.
It must’ve been strange for the two arch-diviners, to come out of a several-year-long stupor into the midst of this chaos. Though, knowing diviners, they’d probably each taken half an hour to get over the shock of it, somewhere between one footfall and the next.
“It is fortunate you came to me,” Zakimel said, only a little boasting in his tone, his gaze passing over me, scrutinising me, as he cast his eyes across the champions. “We’ve successfully removed the amulets, and now we must consider a rational course of –“
As I’d anticipated, with everyone staring, Killstop sprang on him.
No one else here was possessed of speed enough to aid her – or him. No one conscious, at least. It was a one-on-one duel of frightening scale, even though it lasted at most three seconds, coming through almost as a series of still images:
Tanra, her backside on his chest, legs wrapped about the magister’s upper body to pin his arms as she dug into the neck of his robe –
Zakimel, both arms high over his head, holding the champion by one heel, swinging her up into the air to bring her crashing back down to the ground on her skull –
Tanra, kneeling atop his shoulders, thighs holding his head tight in a vice as she gripped the chain beneath his chin –
Zakimel, bringing a blade down at her face as she lay on the ground before him –
Tanra, crouching over his body, the hilt of one of her knives protruding from his sternum.
“Damn it, Zakky!” she cried. “Quick, someone fix him!”
She pulled her knife free, releasing a gush of blood – I noticed immediately that it was only the kitchen knife – and she started backing away slowly. As she went, I could see that she was dragging the pendant by its chain from beneath the torn fabric of his robe.
The confrontation might’ve only lasted three seconds, but now I had to worry about the magisters here – I saw the scowls, the renewed battle-readiness entering their features, their postures –
Will we have to fight again?
The other Magisterium diviners here hadn’t acted… Lady Sentelemeth and her cronies were watching, wide-eyed, all their power and authority deserting them in the face of a true crisis.
And then within three more seconds a number of druids had already reached out with their spells, evidenced by the greenish mist settling about him. Before anyone even got to Zakimel’s side to apply a greater level of healing, he snapped into an upright position, his hand on his wound.
“Who’da thought Zakimel would shave his chest?” Spirit asked into the link, sounding genuinely curious.
“Are we done?” Killstop said aloud, still backing away. Her voice was nasal, as though she were holding back a sneeze or yawn or something. “Are we… can I…”
She fell; Zakimel reached her side first, lowered her to the ground, and gently placed her head down inside her hood.
“She must rest,” he said, an unusual quiver in his voice. “We’ll do what we can, to help her, but… but she’s exhausted her magic.”
I thought back to everything she’d achieved – everything that would’ve gone disastrously wrong today if she’d not been as powerful as she was.
“I should damn-well hope so,” I said, looking down at her, her sightless eyes staring out through the mask. I flicked my eyes across to Lady Sentelemeth. “Killstop’s the Liberator of dropping Mund.”
But, as the others started debating our next steps, my glance lingered on a tiny creature in a blue dress, sitting beside the slowly-evaporating remains of her old friend.
Zel. Zel is the Liberator of Mund.
* * *
I wasn’t used to having to fly across the city without the faerie queen on board, but she’d asked for a bit of time before I left Etherium, and in the wake of Flood Boy’s death I hardly felt inclined to even question her thinking. She needed time; she had it. We’d left in a bit of a rush – Zakimel had been quick to point out that planar chronomancy was fraught with perils, and all of the non-sorcerers were in real danger of overstaying their welcome any minute and becoming bound, permanently, to the otherworld. Netherhame said he was massively exaggerating, but that didn’t stop everyone hopping through the first portal that got opened.
Ignoring the others, I’d taken a moment to thank my fairy, ensuring she knew I thought she was the ‘Liberator of dropping Mund’ too. And all she’d said was to not tell anyone how integral she’d been. Then she turned away from me, sitting down again beside the steaming green splat that had been my faun.
I looked from Olbru’s remains to Xiatan’s – back again – then let her be.
It was terrifying, to think what could have – would have – happened, if Zel hadn’t been as quick-thinking as she had been. But now it was all over I felt a bit queasy over how I’d used Olbru, how he’d died for me without hesitation. Sure, I could’ve been killed without him – but perhaps I wouldn’t have. Perhaps Em would’ve gotten there in time. Perhaps it was me, me that’d killed my faithful minion, not the elemental-armoured, elemental-hearted wizard who’d already stepped out of my sight, through Direcrown’s portal.
Still, I’d rejoined with my wraith upon returning to the Material Plane, and with Zab and Avaelar – and, just for the sake of it, I joined with both my satyrs. If I wasn’t going to have access to the fairy’s perception and danger-sense, the satyr-reflexes would do in a pinch, and their increased strength and durability would come in handy if we ended up getting attacked. We still had no real clue how to proceed. For now, we were doing what was deemed safest.
I didn’t personally like the idea of splitting up, but my voice had been only one of many, and in the end I’d given in – those Spirit cleared had to move the twins to a safe place, and there were a variety of other tasks that needed carrying out.
I was on my way back from Arrealbord Palace with Lady Sentelemeth, Stormsword and Starsight. We were flying as quickly as the combination of wizard with diviner could permit – which was horrifically fast. Star might not have been as powerful as Irimar or Tanra, but others joined their spells with his before we left, including Zakimel – and now nothing moved beneath us as we cut through the sky, even smoke from chimneys frozen, like dry paint on a canvas of air. Despite the lack of wind, Storm’s aeromancy and Star’s chronomancy worked perfectly together, seamlessly transitioning the air about us through the time-bubble – something I hadn’t questioned before but which, now I had more time to notice it, seemed strange. Almost on the level of how druids would transform their clothing, without possessing the power to just transmute random objects. How the line of what was and what wasn’t considered ill-will wavered, how enchanters could affect some kinds of minds but not others… It was a curiosity, nothing more – but surely someone had mentioned it in a book somewhere? I’d have to look it up, once this was all over.
I looked back at the First Lady of Mund, flying beside Em. There was a grimness, a reality in her eyes that hadn’t been there when I’d first met her gaze across the table in the palace. She’d seen things now, just a sliver of what our lives were like, and it was enough to start a change in her. Her golden hair bounced in the stream of air slipping through the bubble, her silver-scaled gown rippling. I admired the fact she hadn’t faltered when it was agreed she’d come with us, help smooth things over.
It had been decided that someone had to retrieve the weapons we’d left at the Arrealbord and explain to them what was going on – that was a task we’d taken, and it was only after Sentelemeth and a band of magisters explained it for the third time that the palace guards started listening and released our belongings. Starsight would come back with us to the Maginox, and after seeing us safely inside he would return to the Tower of Mourning, where Dimdweller, Bookwyrm and Bladesedge had taken Timesnatcher and Killstop. It wasn’t exactly frowned-upon to enter the Gathering chamber when it wasn’t full moon, but still, it wasn’t a done thing – the suspicion someone was attempting to misuse the Ceryad-tree was, of course, integral to the custom. However, Tanra’s flagrant breach of the doors in search of Lovebright’s charm – something a number of diviner champions had perceived the instant it happened, apparently – was eminently excusable. Now she’d been in once today already, and it had been made plain that the Ceryad had been in use for years, it hardly made sense in this time of emergency to not use the Ceryad to help restore them.
I glanced over at the arch-diviner. Without Zel’s augmentations it was hard to pick out the golden stars that blended almost invisibly into the gleaming white weave of his robe.
“How long since we came back to Materium?” I asked.
“As the sun measures it, eighteen minutes,” he answered, then looked over at me from behind his glittering five-pointed mask. “We wrangled with the guards for seventeen minutes.”
I laughed, then drew a breath.
“I am sorry, you know,” I said. “I never meant – Neverwish, it was…“
He’d already raised a hand out towards me, indicating that he wished for me to stop.
“I should not have – I shouldn’t have blamed you,” he said, then looked away. As he continued, his voice lost some of the youthful wistfulness, the trance-like tranquillity it usually possessed – he sounded older, less solemn… more human. “Before Zadhal, I attempted to wound you with my words. I can only praise Kultemeren for the truth… and Belestae that you did not lose your life in that dreadful place before I could right this wrong. It is I who ought be sorry, Feychilde. It is all for Illodin in the end, I fear.”
I looked at him keenly. “For Illodin?”
He met my eyes again. “For grief. For loss. There is not one living thing in this world, my friend, that was not born in death; death is a wave, upon which life coasts like foam bursting, forever falling beneath the surface, being replaced… I mourn my lost friend, even as I smile, knowing I have found one again.”
He reached out, put his hand on my shoulder briefly as we flew.
I appreciated the gesture, but I was confused.
“Right back at ya – but why do you grieve for Neverwish? We might’ve been misled into thinking he was dark – but Lovebright never made us think he was a heretic. They didn’t take off his head, did they? I mean – he’s still… alive? We were going to get an update, from Leafcloak, when…”
I didn’t quite know how to end that sentence.
“You have heard of Magicrux Zyger?”
I sighed. “I’d meant to ask my fairy about that – I’m guessing that’s the hole Henthae throws archmages into? But…” I guessed his meaning, and suddenly felt sick, something no amount of wraith could help with. “But you can get them back out again, right?”
He shook his head slowly, sadly.
“But that makes no sense!” I snapped. “Well, why not just kill them, then? Why have them there – why torture them like that – why waste resources like that? Ah-h-h-h…”
I bit off the sounds. The Magisterium were crazy, and I was going to give them an earful in a few seconds’ time.
“It is not such a simple thing,” the arch-diviner replied, looking ahead of us again. We were coming up on the Maginox now, the five-sided multicoloured needle that dominated the skyline. “The blood of an archmage is a sacred substance, they say. To spill it coldly is to invite Glaif and Illodin’s wrath.”
“Bedtime stories! That’s just –“
He raised his hand. “Perhaps. And yet even in the execution of heretics, when it is done outside combat, the names of the gods are invoked. The old ways are not entirely forgotten. Still, it is not strictly a matter of superstition. It is a matter of policy. Some criminals expect clemency. All know that Heresy alone is punished by the blade. Yet consider now: how might one safely enter such a place, and retrieve a prisoner, without running the risk of freeing some of the world’s worst mass-murderers?”
“But with your powers –“
“My powers, which obviously do not function inside Magicrux Zyger,” he replied. “How else might they imprison those whose merest inclination alone might shake down the stones, tear the walls asunder?”
“They remove their powers,” I breathed.
Even just the thought of it –
He was nodding. “The place cannot be seen, exists in no vision. It is the darkness that is not silent.”
“But how? How is it achieved? If archmagery is such a sacred thing – how can they just take it away like that? I can’t even imagine the glyphs – which gods –“
“I have my suspicions,” Star murmured, “but we have arrived.”
“But I –“
“I know, Feychilde – I know. However, I do not have all the answers you seek.”
He settled down on the path, just outside the bridge, the shield covering the Maginox. There were a number of time-frozen students and waywatchers around him.
A little regretfully, I joined him on the path.
As Stormsword and Sentelemeth landed, he continued, addressing all of us: “My spell shall last a few more minutes – please, hasten to Zakimel. I must aid the others in reviving our fallen comrades.”
With that, he was gone, heading towards the Tower of Mourning. Now that we weren’t moving together I could see the white streak on the air that his blur left behind him, its residue like paint, lasting for longer than normal due to the chronomantic effect.
We still had a bit of a way to go – I let the ladies pass me and followed them across the bridge, towards the steps, the globe-lit archway which lay ahead. But I ignored the motionless moat beneath the spans of the bridge, and instead looked after the arch-diviner as I moved my feet, pondering his words; his light was still there in the sky, still fading away.
Zyger. Where Duskdown said I would try to send him.
Zyger. The name Zel spoke with such fear.
Zyger. Neverwish’s doom.
It was only as we crossed the threshold into the corridors of black stone, heading for the endless spiral stair, that I realised what was troubling me. Why it hadn’t troubled me till now I wasn’t quite sure – there’d been a lot going on at the time – but it came shuddering back into focus suddenly.
How was I supposed to do something with Neverwish, if he could never be freed?
”You. Neverwish. If we do it right, there comes a time when you and he… I can’t tell you much. If I say certain words to you, it won’t happen, and things will be worse. What I can’t see I can infer from the consequences. I just… I wish I could make you trust me, but I wouldn’t even if I could. I just hope you do – some day, if not right now. If it isn’t you, we know who it will be, and things would be worse. Far worse, in the end. Even if I were to do it…”
What could it even mean?
I knew only one thing for certain:
Timesnatcher better not die today. He and I need to have a long talk about honesty.
At least one-and-a-half seconds’ worth…
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