MARBLE 6.7: THE HUNTERS
“Eradicate such evil where it rears its head, and be watchful for the hydra’s regrowth. We cannot permit a single one of their catechisms inside our minds. We locate and purge all such aberrations during your debriefing. Should you suspect yourself or a member of your band of heretical infestation, do not hesitate to report it immediately to your band-leader or sub-division head. Do not be afraid. The earlier such influences are discovered, the more readily they can be expunged, and the swifter the recovery for the unfortunate bearer of sacrilegious thoughts.”
– from the ‘Magister’s Handbook’ ch. 40
“Praise Joran we’re all safe now.”
Lord Haid couldn’t quite get his fingers in order, it seemed – he kept folding his hands over themselves, again and again, a seriously-noticeable nervous tick. But I couldn’t forget him standing over the First Lady and the Lord Shadow, prepared to sell his life for theirs. He might’ve been nervous, but his heart was in the right place.
“Safe – for how long, my lord?” I asked. “We have to do something about the dragon. She – it – wants to take our minds back, remember?”
“There is only one option,” Stormsword said from her seat beside me, voice tightly controlled. I could tell she was painfully aware she was in the presence of her fellow magisters, and of them only Zakimel could be expected to know for certain who she was behind the mask. “It is little different from a heretic situation, only worse – we have no idea what she can do to us. We take her down, fast and hard. Concerted effort, as with titan-class demons.”
As I looked around the table I noted the admiring stares of the twin arch-wizards, Saff and Tarr, their eyes glued to my girlfriend, and I smiled. I was trying to judge the reception of her words in the faces of the others, still doing my best not to show my awe at our environment. This room was on the fourth floor of the Maginox – the actual fourth floor, not the fortieth or four-hundredth: the ensorcellment on the stairway didn’t work when we were moving under the effects of Starsight’s spell, but when we’d arrived one of Zakimel’s minions, presumably granted his own chronomantic bubble by the arch-magister, greeted us and directed us on. I was thankful we didn’t have to climb the whole damn tower, but it made sense now. The halls at the bottom of the building were, of course, the biggest, given its tapering structure. And there were a lot of interested parties.
Given the amount of people Zakimel had invited in, at least half his motive had to be minimising rumours. He’d been happier to let the champions out of his sight than his own magisters, as though he feared the second he took his eyes off them they were going to go around telling all the undergraduates there was a dragon in the city. What most gave me this impression was that the number of people in the room only seemed to increase as we waited; plenty of the mages in here now weren’t involved in the battle in Etherium. I had an awful suspicion some were simply entering, eavesdropping idly, and then, once their shocked expressions gave them away, they were actually being told to take a chair.
Accordingly, we were all seated at a horseshoe-shaped table in what I’d overheard one magister calling the ‘conference hall’. There were something in the vicinity of two hundred and fifty chairs surroundings the table’s outer edge, and in the centre was a smaller table on a raised dais, where Henthae, Sentelemeth and a number of other (almost equally important-looking) officials were sitting. In their midst were Saff and Tarr and their parents, huddled together with confused, horrified expressions – the parents, that was. The kids still only had eyes for Em.
This was the right place for them to be. I couldn’t imagine a safer room than this one.
By now the chairs in the room weren’t quite all full, but we weren’t far off.
One edge of the semi-circular chamber was the purple wall of the Maginox; looking out, I saw that it had started to rain. With the coloured glass, it was as though the amethyst mists of Zadhal, the poisonous work of Vaahn, had claimed the paths, the bridges. The doubled hue was difficult to wrap my head around: the shielding surrounding the school and the fields remained azure-blue to me – no mere glass tinting was going to occlude something like that from my sorcerer’s eye.
Unless you end up in Zyger, and lose your power, a voice inside my head reminded me.
I straightened up in my seat. Half an hour without Zel and I was starting to impersonate her.
“There might be some utility in finding out what she knows,” a druid called in response to Em. “Rather than just offing her at the first opportunity.”
“There may be opportunity after she dies,” a sorcerer suggested, smiling faintly. “It would take the concerted efforts of an entire college, and every penny of its treasury in the purchasing of reagents, if enough were even to be found in the city.”
Idiot.
Muttering swept the room.
“– didn’t think it’d be a private venture –“
“– if we opened the Magisterium coffers, and store-houses –“
“– have a great honking undead dragon on the lawn –“
“– completely impossible,” a sorceress drawled – it was Ciraya sitting there! – she was sneering softly, dismissively, at her non-tattoo-covered rival. “This dragon is clearly an archmage, meaning we can’t control her – not her spirit, at least – if she is even a she… Even our arch-sorcerers can’t command an archghost. Cajole, perhaps, but do we really want to tempt fate by –“
“This is not on the cards,” Zakimel said with surprising directness, raising his voice above the crowd. I could see fatigue on his face, the bristling moustache drooping lamely. For all I knew he was still maintaining people inside time-bubbles somewhere, sapping his strength, but it was more than just that: there was disappointment, self-doubt, written into the creases of his forehead, his frown. “We await the return of those champions still absent. Then we will make a battle-plan.”
“Can’t she be foreseen?” someone piped up.
“She cannot be scried or linked.” When Henthae spoke, almost complete silence fell across the stretches of table. If I’d thought to see any of Zakky’s uncertainty on her face, I’d have been disappointed. “We think the former is due to the interaction of a powerful outside force with her chosen path, whether she knows it or not; the latter is evidently due to a previously-unsuspected level of expertise on her part. We have druids in the field as we speak, attempting to perceive her through their particular senses. Though I will state this, for all to hear,” the Head of Special Investigations drew an audible breath: “this creature’s facility for enchantment astounds me. Like many others, I was fooled. Let none cast aspersions, let none be brought into disrepute! But we must temper fascination with caution. I hold with Stormsword. When Timesnatcher returns, I will advise the dragon’s immediate destruction. I do not care what we think she may or may not know. Every second of her continued existence is an incalculable risk.”
The near-silence held – and held, until:
“Well, when do we suppose that shall be?” Lady Sentelemeth asked the old arch-magister.
Muttering swept the room again.
I sighed. “The sooner Timesnatcher’s back, the better,” I said under my breath, contributing to the general clamour.
“Why?” Storm asked curiously. “You want this over as much as I do?”
I looked into her eyes behind the phoenix-mask. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
She affected a slight shudder, and I instinctively put my hand on her arm, drawing her a little closer.
She smiled grimly. “It’s just – messing with minds… It is not something I even enjoy to read about, hear about… even watch it in a play. Having this happen to me, I… Send me back to the front-lines already.”
“I know… At least we might get to fight a dragon into the bargain.”
Her smile became a little less grim, and she didn’t reply, wistfulness entering her eyes.
“As for Timesnatcher… I was actually thinking about something he once told me.”
I briefly related what he’d said about Neverwish, and what Star had told me about Zyger, masking my language as much as I could in case one of the magisters sitting around us was eavesdropping whilst continuing their own conversations.
“I knew zat… it voz feared,” she breathed, eyes searching my own, letting her accent slip in her excitement. “I did not know zi- this!” She turned aside, blinked a few times, then looked back at me. “This is like having an enchanter in your mind, only… worse, no?”
I nodded lamely and she moved closer, placing her lips close to my ear; when she spoke she whispered such that even I could barely hear her.
“You truly think that you are destined to be imprisoned as a darkmage?”
Now it was my turn to shiver.
“Nooooo…” my tongue trailed out the denial, making it a playful sound.
Yesssss, my mind hissed the confirmation. I couldn’t hide from my fears.
“… yes?” my tongue finished lamely.
She drew back again slightly, so that she could look through the slits in my mask again.
“Then we shall talk to Timesnatcher, together,” she said firmly. “I do not want you to hide this from me, Feychilde. Nothing like this, you understand me? We can avert any future, any doom – together.”
She gripped my hand tight, and I returned the pressure –
“Ow!”
I released her hand and turned up my wraith-form at the same time.
“Sorry!” I adopted a pained expression. “Still getting used to the double-satyr thing.”
“It’s okay!” She shook her hand, half-wincing, half-grinning. “Save it for the dragon, will you?”
“So sorry…”
It might not have cost her much, but I felt so much better. I had back-up. Not Stormsword’s – Em’s. Em would guide me away from the darkness that wasn’t silent. This powerful, amazing, beautiful girl would actually argue my case, work for her own reasons to change my destiny for me.
Help me survive the dark tides of time ahead. Save me from losing everything I’d gained that fateful day I’d kicked their grave in goodbye.
Save my soul…
She was looking across the table, saying something to Ciraya, but I was staring into her face, her cobalt eyes, and I found her hand once more beneath the table. She let me take it in my own, and this time I turned up my wraith some more so that I could squeeze as hard as I wanted without her noticing.
I love you, Emrelet Reyd.
At that very moment the door banged open once more. Timesnatcher was framed in the shadows, the white hourglasses on his spare robe just as radiant as I was used to. Other champions were behind him, Killstop right there at his elbow.
“I’m back,” he said, “and I know exactly what we have to do.”
* * *
I looked up and down the steep Hilltown street, left to right, back again, for what must’ve been the hundredth time. It was almost three o’ clock, and the light was already starting to wane; the side-street would be quiet even when it wasn’t raining, and most of the Hilltowners I saw were in the process of rushing indoors out of the downpour. I spotted no locals heading into the tavern outside which I was standing – the place might as well have just shut for the day. Only those whose occupations necessitated being outside were braving the weather: mostly transporters of goods, wagons laden with barrels, sacks, crates. Their horses didn’t look too happy about their current assignments, either.
“Still nothing,” I said over the link.
“Stop looking with your eyes. Whoever they are, they’ll have eldritches with them. Do you use your eyes to sense eldritches?”
If I don’t have to look with my eyes, why are you making me stand out here in the rain?
I bit down on my first few answers, going instead with the one I knew would open me up to the least-scathing reply. “No, Killstop, I do not.”
“The reason you’re the lookout is you’ve got senses we don’t. Do we have to go over the plan again?”
“No, Killstop, we do not,” I replied patiently.
I heard Em giggling inside my mind.
“Don’t be ganging up on me now, ladies.”
Glancefall was chuckling too. “I think it’s too late for that, Feychilde. You have my sympathies.”
“If this continues, I will report each and every one of you,” Jaevette said. “We are on a mission. Protocol dictates –“
“Protocol dictates you listen to your commanding officer, the dubious honour of which belongs, it just so happens, to me,” Killstop said sweetly. “Or did I hear Zakimel wrong?”
Em giggled again, helplessly, and perhaps just a trace nervously. She probably didn’t know for certain whether Jaevette had guessed her identity – she had a fine line to walk in that regard.
In any case, Jaevette didn’t reply to the arch-diviner’s question. At least she wasn’t a hypocrite. I knew if I were in her shoes – being bossed around by a kid a quarter of my age, one who didn’t even wear the badge – I’d have at least grumbled a bit.
Not Jaevette. No biting riposte, no witty repartee to keep me entertained while I stood here on the street. Instead I kept myself busy, hoping the canvas on the frame above me didn’t give in and drench me in a few gallons of rainwater.
I sighed, and leaned back against the wall heavily, letting my skull smack into the bricks. It didn’t really matter much, something I’d discovered after trapping my fingers in Keyla’s door when I returned her amulet. A couple of satyrs heavier, I was virtually immune to minor injuries now. It seemed their reflexes were no good for things that simply wouldn’t hurt them.
I would wait under the awning outside the tavern, wrapped in an invisibility that would hide me from both casual onlookers and enemies. Wait, until I sensed the eldritches. I would tell Tanra, and she would disable the arch-diviner and arch-enchanter accompanying the arch-sorcerer. She and Glancefall would then set about removing Lovebright’s – the dragon’s, damn it, I had to stop thinking of her as a human being… They would set about removing the dragon’s protections, bringing this trio of archmages back into the fold of sane people.
It made sense, I supposed – as Timesnatcher had said, we really did have to ensure every last part of the dragon’s influence was cleansed from the city before we could be certain about confronting her. We didn’t want to do it with a dozen or more archmages still at her beck and call… Still, it rankled. I wanted to be in Irimar’s group, the group tracking her down…
I wanted to be there when it started.
Five archmages per team, and Timesnatcher had put me with Killstop. A credible choice – me and Tanra worked together a lot, for sure, and we got on well – ish – but had he done it just to avoid an awkward conversation? Had my epiphany about Magicrux Zyger gotten me and Em shunted off to one side? Stormsword, Glancefall in his jester’s apparel, and the arch-magister called Jaevette rounded out the group. Zel, who’d rejoined me after I left the Maginox, seemed to have already developed a special hatred for the magister.
Jaevette was a plump woman of advancing years, a druidess in a textured green robe – but there the similarities with Leafcloak ended. She was tall and fierce-looking, younger than Leafcloak by at least a decade; her hair had been shorn short and left messy despite the otherwise well-groomed appearance. Certainly her robe was a whole lot cleaner than most druids’ I’d known, the ten-spoked Magisterium wheel shining away upon her breast as though its threads had been polished.
“Perhaps she gets her cats to do it for her,” Zel said.
If you’re up to joking, you must be feeling better, I replied.
“I can’t… Don’t want to talk about it.”
I’m sorry, Zel. If I’d moved him –
“Please, Kas. He’ll be back… someday. And I don’t blame you, or Winterprince. I blame…”
The fairy cut off her sentence. I’d heard the anger starting to flood her voice, even felt it, a squirt of bile rising in my throat.
“I’m sorry. I… I really hate dragons.”
You want to poke the eyes out of this one? I don’t think anyone’s going to complain if you do.
“I’d rather stay with you, if that’s okay. I’m of more use in here.”
Of course it’s okay… Whatever you need.
“Kas…” I could feel the emotion surging through her again. “Thank you,” she finished simply.
No problem… Say, can I ask you about Magicrux Zyger?
“What about it?”
Well, what do you know about it? You mentioned it, earlier…
“You’re still worrying about this Timesnatcher-Neverwish business?” she said it in a scoffing tone. “Look, you interact with Killstop on a daily basis, and Duskdown has taken an interest in you – I’d say none of them have any idea about your realfuture. You need to stop worrying and start enjoying it, Kas. If you’re going to be a prominent arch-sorcerer in the capital of the world, you’re going to have to start taking this kind of thing in your stride.”
I don’t see the others getting this kind of intrusion, though.
“Do they have your kind of power?”
Em –
“You could take her. You know it.”
After what Winterprince did –
“He’s still stronger than her… for now.” She said this last in a tone of grudging admittance. “And that was on another plane, where you didn’t have… us. You could definitely take her.”
I didn’t like even the vaguest consideration of ‘taking’ her – not in that way.
“Kas!”
Sorry – I mean, what does that matter?
“Your strength? What does it matter? What doesn’t it matter? Do you really think they aren’t going to take an interest in you, when you turn a plane inside out to wipe tens of thousands of undead creatures from existence? When you –“
That was Nentheleme! And that, that Saphalar bloke!
“She came for you, Kas. You drove it, the whole thing. Don’t deny it. You have power!”
So the diviners are interested in me, because I’m powerful. Because I make stupid decisions. And… I should just ignore it? Seriously?
“… Something like that.”
Zel…
“What? I don’t know everything, do I? You know what I was saying, about how they can’t see your future? That goes tenfold – thousandfold! – for me. Don’t you think… don’t you think I’d tell you, if I could see something? I do…”
I shook my head. And the dragon wanted me to get in trouble with Sentelemeth because I’m powerful?
“Who knows? It could’ve just been a fun little game for her.”
Zel was right –
“Again…”
– it was entirely possible that this whole escapade had just been the dragon larking around, an amusing jaunt that got out of her control…
Suddenly senses came alive.
Wraiths, their chaotic swirling patterns standing out in my mind, moving up the street towards me. A vanguard, designed to warn them in case of threats.
We’re on.
“Four of them,” Zel immediately supplied. “They’ve got a druid as well, it appears, given the height on that one.”
“Four, not three – druid with them,” I reported to the others as I spread my shields. “I’ll trap the wraiths when you signal.”
“Move into position behind them,” Killstop commanded, at the same time as Stormsword said softly, “I feel them. One’s very tall…”
“They aren’t trying to hide,” I mused. I could see the wraiths now, vortexes of shadow on the air, and manipulated my barriers to draw them into my diamond-cage without them even realising. “She’s gathering them up, a show of force… Distraction?”
“Potentially,” Killstop answered. “If she’s going to throw away her Minions as a diversion, though, we’ll snap them up. She may not be aware we’ve got a few of our own lined up to take down the Master.”
“Did you just refer to Timesnatcher as a Minion?” Glancefall asked incredulously.
“If I’m the Master, what else can he be?” the seeress said, deadpan. “You don’t get to take two Masters. That would be cheating.”
I drew the wraiths towards me before locking them in place behind me, stowing my shields down to a minimum again. With my fey-sight I saw, far off, the archmages coming round the corner at the end of the street below me. A champion I recognised – the elven enchantress, Dancefire – with an arch-magister in tow, and two others that seemed to be randomly-attired darkmages –
Glancefall started to answer, but then Killstop barked: “Now!”
I crushed the wraiths even as I whipped the shields back, closing my trap.
The ambush was, as all good ambushes, ridiculously one-sided.
A lone wagoner watched on through the torrential downpour as anarchy erupted in the centre of his peaceful street, robed figures that flickered in and out of existence soaring in a tornado of violence:
A giant woman throwing another giant woman through a shop window, and, when that didn’t put her down, throwing her through a brick wall –
Fingers of lightning that leapt down through the rain but then stayed in place, a blinding ring, fencing-in a series of almost-imperceptible blurs –
The illusion of some kind of rope-demon, like a huge mass of nooses, reaching out for people’s necks, flickering off into non-existence almost as quickly as it had appeared –
Six or seven actual demons, being trodden under by a hill of black iron spikes, before the crimson flames that had birthed them reappeared to dismiss them –
Anarchy that lasted less than thirty seconds.
Then our invisibility came flooding back, uncontested now by no opposed enchanters of equal power. A pair of darkmages and a pair of soon-to-be allies in our custody, we left the street’s sole occupant and those staring out their windows to rub their eyes and winch their jaws shut. If it weren’t for Jaevette’s crude technique leaving one building in a state of disrepair, no one would even believe the story the onlookers had to tell.
* * *
“Are we just, like, rounding up every darkmage in the city?” I asked as we embarked from the Maginox bridge, flying off on our third excursion since the diviner-champions returned.
“It will be interesting to see how the Magisterium chooses to classify zese – these bounties…”
“You can give it up, Miss Reyd,” Jaevette cut in. “Don’t think I don’t know you now I’ve watched you, been with you up close – I can smell you’re the same –“
“Ah, excuse me?” Killstop piped up as we started flying above the milk-glass of the Noxway. “Jaevette? Pretty creepy.”
“Totally creepy,” I said.
“Totally confidential, too, right, Jaevette?” Glancefall cut in, overly-casual curiosity in his voice. “Jaevette Astraman, whose thoughts I can see with slightly better clarity than she thinks I can? It just so happens, I didn’t know who Stormsword was.”
Killstop took back over: “Which is a serious breach of the Magisterium ethical code, Jaevette –“
“Violation eighty-three, clauses six through nine,” Em interjected quietly.
“And I’m afraid I foresee that, as you’re unaccustomed to talking and flying at the same time –“
That incensed the druidess. “I beg your pardon!”
“– whilst on a mission, by your own admission,” Killstop continued, unperturbed, “if you continue using the link you may perform at a less than satisfactory level. Should you insist on speaking –“
“Listen, you little twerp –“
“– despite the warning of a powerful arch-diviner, the command of your supervisor, and the general disapproval of your peers –“
“Peers!”
“– I’m sure Glancefall will oblige me in creating a secondary link…”
“I was ready for that,” the enchanter said; suddenly I couldn’t hear Jaevette in the background anymore. “Don’t push her too far, Killstop. She’s in shock too, you know. If anyone says something urgent, I’ll filter it through.”
“Thank you.” Em sounded a bit embarrassed about her slip-up.
Tanra continued. “And to answer the damn question, Feychilde, no, this isn’t even close to the darkmage population of the city. What, do you think anyone even has a clue? What fraction of them do you even think are active, on any given day, year, decade?”
Her response sent chills up my spine.
“I – I have no idea…”
“No, you have no idea at all. I don’t! The only reason we’re finding these is because we have her as our focus – the dragon. These aren’t random. This is her army, the force she’s been building up over years.”
“If she’d wanted us finished, she could’ve killed us all, any time she wanted.” Glancefall had a tone of revelation in his voice. It seemed the enchanter was still only just getting it. “I admit – I don’t understand…”
I decided to field this one. “That’s why there might be some sense to what the druid was saying, in the conference hall. I still agree, Storm, that we have to finish her – but if we can try to trick her into giving us answers beforehand… wouldn’t it be worth something?”
It took Stormsword a moment to reply, but when she did, the response was considered. “Not at the expense of letting her back into our minds, Feychilde.”
“I don’t know – perhaps we could use that lull her into a false sense of security?” I was sceptical even as I projected the words, but it was better to table an idea than shelve it, when we were so very low on ideas. “Sure, maybe everything at the palace was just a bit of fun, but what Timesnatcher said about the twins, their destiny he can’t see… They’ve got to be the catalyst, haven’t they?”
“We’ll find out,” Killstop said, and her certitude filled me with confidence. “Glancefall, get Jaevette on the link. We’re here.”
* * *
It was dark, dark and still raining, before the report we’d all been waiting for arrived, relayed by Zakimel via glyphstone. I’d never thought I’d be so glad to see the highborn’s bristling moustache, his severe gaze. At the time it came through, the five of us were crossing Oldtown with a darkmage named Scorchtorn in tow, heading for Magicrux Falwyn.
There was none of the usual preamble. The declaration as to who would receive the report must’ve been preset beforehand, our names cast into the stone in advance.
The core of the message was expressed in his first three words, short and sweet.
“We have her.”
* * *
The heath in Treetown was already ringed by archmages, the elements of our wizards and illusions of our enchanters lighting the scene, almost to the point where it looked like it was still daytime. They’d turned off the rain, here at least. Our target was a nearly-treeless mound of earth, just a few copses of leafless birches nestled on the eastern slope. Gorse brush and thistle were the stubble on the hill’s cheeks, but it was upon the crest of the rise that everyone’s attention was focussed.
She was there, right in front of us. Unmoving. Invisible.
It was hard to believe, but I was staring at a dragon – a dragon of an elder line, apparently, given her native power-level. One of the most fearsome creatures in existence.
Seeing would be believing. Once our enchanters were ready to assault her, strip away the veil, we would see it. We would believe.
And, for whatever reason, she was just sitting there, waiting for us to gather.
It wasn’t just archmages. There were at least ten magister-bands buzzing around, setting up wards, preparing their spells and their anti-draconic arsenals; the heath was too broad for us to cover it in a weave, even with this many of us, but we could get ready for the moment we advanced up the slope. The Rainbow’s Edge and the Constellation were also here, mage-champions desperate for a piece of the pie; their sorcerers had summoned a veritable army of lesser demons, and I could sense without looking that more were arriving by the second.
There were several links at different levels; Spiritwhisper was my current switchboard, reading my intentions and filtering my thoughts through to the right people accordingly. ‘Easy’, he’d called it. It sounded like a nightmare to me.
Zakimel, Killstop and Dimdweller were engaged in a heated debate with Elkostor, Shadowcloud and Stormsword. The wizards had been preparing masses of magic, ready to give the dragon everything they had, and keeping it pent-up like this was putting them on edge; the diviners were telling them to wait until Timesnatcher arrived.
“Please tell me this isn’t a massive, massive trap,” I thought worriedly to the other champions.
“Feychilde, losing his nerve,” Winterprince commented. “I didn’t think you’d be quite so upset after losing to me, but here we have you…“
“Winterprince, using a link for once, only to act like a…”
I sighed. In my heart I knew he was only attacking me as a cover for his own humiliation, and I could pull at that, tease him over his desperation to save face in the wake of what had happened – but what would be the point? Here, now, possibly just moments away from engaging a winged engine of pure destruction in combat? That would just be on his level.
“Drop it, yes, I lost my nerve. I lost it when I uncovered a dropping dragon in the dropping wardrobe and saved your dropping ungrateful ass! Can someone with a brain that isn’t covered in a layer of permafrost confirm that this – isn’t – a – trap?”
“This isn’t a trap,” Star thought immediately. “Nor is it a confrontation.”
“Not a confrontation?” Glimmermere’s voice was very quiet, very tense. “I can feel her there. I know how big she is. She’s real.”
“She’s real,” I repeated under my breath, staring at the hill.
Zel, any luck yet?
I’d set my fairy on the dragon’s wards what felt like ages ago now, and hadn’t had a report back.
“This is crazy, Kas,” she replied tersely. “Crazy. If I thought Henthae or Dreamlaughter were tough… give me a dozen Dreams… I’m… This is disturbing, on so many levels.”
“I can’t break through her invisibility,” I thought at the champions.
“We’re workin’ on it,” Spirit replied tersely. I could see him with the other enchanters, heads bowed in small groups, clearly pooling their powers somehow. “Soon, we’ll start, and you’ll see.”
But the sand in the hourglass had drained, and when Timesnatcher arrived, the storm of his chronomancy bringing through his band to the fore of the crowd, everything changed.
Lovebright came walking down the hill towards him, and he strode up through the tall weeds to meet her.
Hush fell across the space, both physical and psychic, even the demons receiving quiet commands to be silent.
Lovebright had removed her mask – no, the illusion wore no mask; it was different – and now, with the unveiling of her true nature, the image’s delicate beauty had been revealed for the facade it truly was. Joceine Tamaflower was a pretty picture, nothing more. No more real than Dream had been – Dream, one of her victims, one of those we’d still not come across…
No, the exposure of her real identity made every trace of beauty on her features into a mockery: each careful brushstroke of the artist was a sly dig at the vanities and lusts of humans beings, every expression of care and warmth a blasphemy. This thing ate us, swilled our skeletons in its stomach to brew its breath…
Gods above, how many people must she have eaten, since she arrived here?
“Shh,” Zel hissed. “She’s about to speak to him.”
At least she didn’t look caring and warm now. She looked distraught, if anything.
“T-Timesnatcher.”
They were a hundred yards from me, but that was no obstacle. The illusion spoke with the enchantress’s typical Northman accent, yet the torment… the torment in her voice, that was new.
“Lovebright. Softsmile. Quietsigh. Appropriately unobtrusive names, I suppose. You’ve been a busy girl, haven’t you? What do I even call you?”
“She – I –“ Lovebright looked over her shoulder fearfully, as if glancing back at the dragon only she was able to see. “Her n-name is Tyr Kayn. Timesnatcher…“
I felt the collective wincing that went through the crowd at that name.
So she is a Tyr.
Almost as bad as an Ord.
But Timesnatcher was cutting her off coldly. “’Her name’? You mean your name.”
“I-I’m Joceine Tamaflower – Jocey, if y-”
“No.” Timesnatcher’s voice was hard, flat. “You don’t get to do that. We know. We all know. That’s going nowhere.”
“You don’t understand!” the enchantress burst out. It wasn’t quite a sob; there was too much bitterness mixed into her sorrow for that, but tears were coursing down her face all the same. “I was only b-born the night you almo-”
She swallowed, a dry sound.
“Almost kissed me,” she choked, “and I – I know what’s happening to me – I know who I am, what I am – but – she was wrong – she failed! Don’t you see, she failed! You were stronger. You were always going to be the strongest one. I thought – after she used Feychilde to kill them –“
After what now?
I felt myself flushing, saw some of the others glancing at me, unnerved.
“– I could make everything as it was, put the pieces back together, for us, and –”
“I tire of this.” For all the gravity with which he spoke, Timesnatcher sounded shaken. “You can no longer court my favour, Tyr Kayn! Do you hear me up there?”
He stepped forwards and swept his arm at the crest of the hill, shouldering right through Lovebright.
Though when she went crashing on her back in the grass, whimpering, biting back a yelp of pain and shock, even he paused, looked down at her.
“You aren’t real,” I heard him whisper to himself.
“She isn’t real, Timesnatcher!” Glancefall muttered over the link.
“I know. She isn’t… getting to me…”
But Lovebright was talking, and she was getting to me.
There was no way she was lying.
“I’m real. I am real! It was – the Ceryad – it was too much and she made me and all along, all along I knew it – why do you think I chose ‘Lovebright’? It was because of Lightblind! All along, it was you. Lightblind, the girl you really loved. And then he took her from you and I could feel your hurt, I could feel it in me and –“
“Shut up!” Timesnatcher screamed, levelling a finger at her as she lay there on the ground. “You aren’t real! Lovebright was my friend – Lightblind, she…”
There was just a hint of ironic laughter in the seeming’s weeping. Just enough to be human.
“I’m dying,” she managed to say. “L-Lovebright is dying! Please – let me stay. If sh-she leaves, I’ll die, and I – I don’t want to die –“
“She’s a monster,” I thought, feeling the permafrost in my own brain. The icy coldness that elided concerns, caution, bringing down the mask of battle. “She made Lovebright… real. As a last gambit.”
“She g-gave the seemin’ a soul?” Spirit sounded ill. “The Ceryad can do that?”
“Kill it,” Stormsword begged. “Kill it, now.”
“Kill it,” someone else said.
“Kill it!” the roar was taken up.
“It won’t work,” I caught Timesnatcher saying from his position, halfway up the hill; my outer ears worked better than my inner one, such was the tumult over the link –
The cries of the druids were being lost in the chaos.
The first attacks began, and the centre of the heath suddenly dropped away into the earth, leaving Timesnatcher standing right beside the lip that overlooked the new crater.
The dust that rose was whipped up and combined into a solid block of material, coalescing on the air into a huge, glistening weight, and then the hammer-head came dropping straight back down to strike.
At the same time, an inverted forest of shimmering icicles coalesced and descended, thousands of branching configurations, tens of thousands of frozen spears gleaming in the night as they fell into the pit –
Anything but fire against a Tyr.
“– not down there!” I caught Jaevette bellowing, echoing another druid – many of them had taken flight, searching the skies frantically, shrieking their sudden panic to the invisible, airborne teams –
“What a rabble,” I caught Winterprince snarling derisively; I could see him, already up there with them –
“Damn it!” Stormsword was raging.
“She’s already gone,” Timesnatcher managed to make himself heard. “She could hear our thoughts, even with her power broken. She wasn’t going to let herself be harmed.”
He was kneeling beside Lovebright, and, as the wizards aborted their pre-planned strikes and took off hunting the elusive behemoth, the arch-diviner took the young woman’s fading body into his arms. Her flesh, her robe – she was pulsing with ever-increasing rapidity, and between each vanishing she only returned to our world with less colour, less opacity.
“I’m leaving you,” Lovebright whispered. “I’m going. And I’ll never… never come back… I’m so sorry…”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Timesnatcher said soothingly. “You were her victim as much as any of us.”
There was a smile on the seeming’s lips. “Us. I was one of you. I was… if only… for a few days… Don’t… Don’t let them forget me.”
He shook his head.
Her eyes closed, and she stilled in his embrace.
“Netherhame?” Timesnatcher thought.
“I’m here.” The sorceress wasn’t one of those who’d scattered; she floated forwards, a purplish shadow with more solidity to her than the dying Lovebright.
“Can you?” he asked.
I saw as the tall champion shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Timesnatcher. There’s… there’s nothing there.”
It was interesting that she said that. I could feel something there, even at this distance.
A wraith.
She was sparing his feelings, even if he knew it. And Lovebright’s personality, even if it had managed to find an imprint in Nethernum through the Ceryad’s power, would surely be contaminated. Something you could never trust, a shard of an evil creature’s will made manifest through soul-sickness and self-delusions…
Timesnatcher’s arms were empty. He rose to his feet, lifted his face to the wind –
“It’s started,” he said softly in a tone of wonder, as though speaking unconsciously and only to himself. “That’s why Ryntol Wood gets set on fire. It’s not the dragon. This time, they come for us.”
Our forces were scattered over the area; we had no battle-formation to speak of. Our grand orchestrator was still befuddled, still putting the pieces together. Only a sense of mounting doom in the air gave warning.
“Back! Get back!” Killstop yelled, at the same time as Zakimel cried: “Code thirty-two! I repeat, code thirty-two!”
Heretics. They were coming for us – here.
I was tired. It had been an incredibly long-feeling day, and I was starting to get so used to the druids’ little pick-me-ups that I hardly noticed the difference now. I hardened my heart, raising my fingers, my forces.
These are murderers.
My shields blossomed and bloomed over the grass, but where my farthest barriers rippled into life they suddenly fizzled away, coming into contact with the brutal blades of blue and red forces, the spells of Hierarch-sorcerers and their eldritches, shields that preceded them as they stepped out of their doorways.
“… unanticipated numbers…”
“… you get back, damn it! If you…”
“… glyph a message to Doomspeaker…”
They were coming out everywhere, contingents of fresh spell-casters, engaging the wizards and druids stretched across the skies: figures resplendent in rags and coarse woollen robes. Some wore scarves or cheap masks upon their faces, while many didn’t care, baring their identities for all to see as they flew or hovered about us.
So many of them.
One of them on the ground to my right intoned her challenge in a rich, throaty voice, her accent no less coarse than her hooded raiment:
“Champions of Mund! Dogs of the Magisterium! Well met! and farewell.”
Even as she spoke she raised her hand, and lightning leapt down and out, shredding one of Netherhame’s barriers.
“Hierarch Thirteen,” someone intoned, dread in their trembling voice.
There was no parley here. No trading of insults and threats.
They fell on us like a pack of wolves descending on rabbits trapped out in the open, and before we knew what was happening it was too late for us to escape.
The battle was joined, and we were committed, for good or for ill.
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