MARBLE 6.8: ALREADY DEAD
“When you carry a message, you are not yourself. You bear the thought of the sender. Most messages pass unknown from one mind to another, seeping through the cracks in the soul’s walls. Eventually no one remains themselves. All are a conglomeration of messages. An amalgam of conscious and unconscious meanings.”
– from the Orovaic Creed
Most of the heretics were grounded, surrounding us; we formed a hasty battle-line, and only just in time. Dozens of attacks hammered our weaves as waves of minions descended upon each other, biting and burning, screaming and spell-casting. Elementals and banshees and vampires and demons and giant golden squirrels were all wrapped up in a ferocious melee, rays of energy streaking through the fray to splash against invisible weaves on the far side. Gilaela was the sole unicorn on the battlefield, a gleaming, purifying presence whose mere arrival scorched my enemies’ minions – never mind when she let them get a taste of her horn’s power. I watched as she rode the broad back of a grass elemental, then leapt high, descending at a draumgerel and bursting it like a sore, the acidic goo just rolling off her flanks.
But this was no ordinary contest of archmages. We had dozens and dozens of magisters, applying themselves to the new task at hand with all their long-trained instincts, with all their lesser artefacts and premeditated magic. The heretics seemed to have even more mages in their ranks than we did – and they fielded as many archmages as the champions and the Magisterium combined.
They had the greater numbers, and they came through their portals or flew in swiftly on the winds of wizards. Their tactics were already decided, their placements chosen specifically.
We were fewer – Doomspeaker and Henthae had a portion of our forces held in reserve – and many of us were exhausted. Our mages were specifically prepared to fight a dragon, not a war.
And to think, a few hours ago I’d been worried about Dream interfering in our appointment with the heretics.
The battle-line lasted all of ten seconds.
Fires erupted everywhere. Up until now the magisters had been almost silent over the link, making terse reports, giving terse commands – quite the professional opposite of the champions’ operation, and it seemed there was something to what Jaevette had been saying earlier; it certainly helped Zakimel get his instructions across to his lackeys. Once one of the outer weaves fell and some of our force was exposed, however, wails split both the air and the telepathic space we all shared. We were flanked, overrun – we couldn’t cover enough ground with our weaves and at Netherhame’s shouted command we let them fade in favour of mobility. I moved in response to the screams, soaring towards and across the perimeter, attempting to keep as many of the lesser casters within the bounds of my protections as I could manage.
But already it was happening. Not twenty seconds after they fell upon us, and we were dying in droves. Swarms of insects went rampaging, devouring the odd defenceless mage here and there. Diviners ripped through barriers faster than I could make them, and when I was down to my square-shield I cut one of the attackers, almost accidentally, one of my force-blades taking his arm off. I didn’t see him get healed, but I did see their druids joining the assault, colossal crows and snakes and hounds and even a worm – two of them had grown to impressive stature, but stayed at the back in humanoid form, their eyes on the battle. Those would be healers, then.
Enchanters were appearing out of nowhere, delivering lethal strikes, then disappearing again. The lesser ones I could see, thanks to Zel, and at one point I managed to shout a warning to a magister – she twisted out of the way of the sword swinging at her throat – only for the grass itself to lengthen and harden in the space of a second, right beneath her feet, some druid piercing her with thirty overlapping green blades.
Blood. Blood ran freely across the grass, and this time the demons weren’t the cause. They were merely one of the tools being applied to the problem of killing as many magisters and champions as possible, in as short a time as it could be managed.
The earth rolled itself up towards us in sheets, slabs fifty feet thick, forcing me to dismiss or teleport the summons I’d already brought to the fight.
Loose dirt and body parts showered down onto my shields as the very ground loomed over us, towering high, pushing us back towards the rim of the newly-formed crater –
Then my girlfriend descended from the storm-clouds, a solid sword of pure lightning in her hand, and sliced the mounds in two, parting them like banana-peel to crash down on either side of my barriers.
“Up!” she shouted at me.
“Them!” I cried back, waving my hand at the seven or eight magisters clustered beneath me.
“They should have had the augments!” She sounded enraged. “I do not need this distraction!”
She swooped lower and gestured at them, and we took the fight to the skies.
It seemed the heretics were doing the same. We soon made up a cloud, a globe of targets strafing through the air over the heath, shields overlapping and contesting, pushing and pulling – some were plummeting, aflame or encased in ice, while others were already black crisps tumbling from the skies with their masks and rings melting. Still others seemingly hadn’t had their mind-securing amulets created by archmagery like ours had been – they were deliberately falling, landing with dull thuds on the ground, serene smiles or demented grins on their faces.
Our druids were tending to most of them – Glimmermere wasn’t even fighting, instead spending her time going from the northern side to the southern, to the east and west, just healing the wounded, defended all the while by Shadowcloud’s brilliant lightning-storm –
Then I saw a druid-magister near me tear his own head off. I saw Mountainslide’s lightning rebound upon him, almost stripping him to bone and sending him plummeting. It was too much for me to take.
I used my force-blades like a hammer to bat aside the sorcerer protecting a cadre of enchanters, and when they tried to go invisible, flee in all directions, the four diamonds I created from a spinning central ring trapped them in mid-air.
I didn’t quite know what to do with them, but that didn’t matter for long – they stuttered into visibility when they slammed into my force-lines, and that moment of visibility was, for them, one moment too long: a random gout of flame was directed at them from above.
I watched, mystified, as the four mages’ ashes drifted out of my diamonds –
“You’re velcome!” Em’s elated breath came to my ear, and she descended past me through the shields I’d constructed, striking down at the female wizard who’d first challenged us, Hierarch Thirteen, the one who’d thrown lightning at Netherhame, the one who’d been besting Mountainslide…
I should’ve taken the opportunity to put a shield around her but I was frozen there in the air for a moment – the ashes were still drifting about, even rolling upwards a little as they fell sideways, caught by gusts of spellbound air –
She killed them. Like they were demons.
“It… isn’t it what you want, too?” Zel asked in a small voice.
But I didn’t get a chance to answer her.
A male voice, young and furious, roared: “Feychilde!”
The sorcerer I’d batted aside was back, and he’d brought a friend.
Both were surrounded in shields, but the archmage, the shorter of the two, had a shield that didn’t flicker and fade between revolutions – an accomplished arch-sorcerer’s personal barriers.
Great.
I spread my force-walls between us and threw a few blades along its surfaces, cutting at him to test his strength as I retreated.
“Don’t run from me, Feychilde!” he cried, his Rivertown accent coming through as he gave chase. “You killed her – you will pay!”
I slowed a little, feeling confused.
“What do you care?” I called back. “I thought killing people was doing you a favour!”
He took advantage of my hesitation, spreading a titanic diamond around me, encapsulating all my shields.
How in the Hells…?
“He’s strong!” Zel hissed.
A thousand inward-pointing blades protruded from the diamond and speared towards me, stabbing deep into my shields.
“You will pay!”
“I never killed anyone!” I yelled. “I just trapped them –“
“You chopped off her legs, left ‘em there to be burnt to cinders! What did you do with her body? Did you burn her, like you burned her spiders? Did you laugh when you killed her? Did you?”
The heretic, from Firenight Square…
“You chopped her up – do you deny it? Do you dare deny it!”
The heretic was screaming, pressing forwards at me with his taller companion at his side, pushing me away from the heath – if I released my grip on my shield it would pass over me and I’d fall into his spikes, so I was forced to move with him –
“You chopped – her – up – do you deny it?”
“No!” I screamed back. “I chopped her up! She was murdering children!”
His shieldcraft was indeed strong, but mine was stronger. My square was trapped, so I made my triangle’s blades into scissors, and as his walls rushed in at me I sheared through his spikes, releasing my square –
I pointed my right hand at him, index and middle fingers forked, a v-shape to pin his diamond –
Then before he could react I punched out with my left, a single reinforced spike that split his diamond at the pinned corner, piercing the forces –
I tempted him into the obvious misstep. He crossed his own lines, trying to stop me.
I closed my left hand and withdrew it, swallowing his forces inside my own.
“What…” I heard him mutter.
I spun the directionality on the diamond and it flipped over, imprisoning both him and his sorcerous colleague. His reinforced circle-shield was now being speared by my own spikes.
I could see beneath his hood, the way his piggy little eyes squirmed as they roved left to right, up and down – I could imagine the sweat on his brow, realising how close him and his buddy were to being shredded.
“You’ll regret this,” I heard him huffing. “You’ll regret it, when the dragons come!”
“Hear ye hear ye, the dragon just dropping left,” I spat at him.
“It’ll be back,” he sneered. “Go on, kill us, Liberator!”
My hands trembling, I floated there, paralysed.
Behind the two heretics I spotted Killstop. She was far to the south of me, dancing on the air beyond Shallowlie’s shield; the seeress fended off at least three other diviners as the sorceress desperately tried to slip past an enemy arch-sorcerer, his constant cones of wind barraging her, keeping her pinned down.
Past them, the woods were burning; figures were moving through the smoke on the ground, fighting amidst the snapping branches. A few magisters were desperately trying to put out the flames, while gangs of heretics sought to immolate more trees by the second, distracting them from the true contest.
“Kill us, or kill yourself!” the Hierarch’s ally yelled at me from within the cocoon of death. “If you won’t kill ‘em for us, take yourself out the equation, and let us get on with our jobs!”
Why does everyone want me to kill people? I growled internally.
Zel had no answer.
My will evaporated, and my blades faltered, their strength and keenness diminished. The heretic’s shields only blazed brighter and brighter as my resolve waned.
Then I noticed as the distant figure of Killstop froze. The three dark diviners were floating back, nursing their injuries – but there was another person hanging in the air in front of the seeress, a woman with her hood down, curly blonde hair loose in the breeze. I couldn’t catch what was being said over the clamour.
Another arch-diviner?
“Oh sweet Nentheleme,” I heard Zel murmur.
What? Who is it?
“E-everything tells me this isn’t going to go well, Kas…”
The curly-haired one darted towards Tanra –
They did not blur together in combat. They seemed to explode. The sheer amount of movements each was making was enough to leave a million after-images in the onlooker’s eye –
And in what seemed to be an instant they both travelled fifty feet – straight downwards –
I followed the colour-streak in the air with my eyes, only to see the two women locked in a fierce clutch on the ground.
Killstop was on her back in the weeds, and the heretic was standing on her chest, booted feet planted squarely in the girl’s ribcage.
Each of Killstop’s hands clutched a dagger –
Each of the stranger’s hands clutched one of Killstop’s wrists.
Going like a piston, the heretic-diviner yanked up on Tanra’s arms and thrust down with her legs, again and again, enough for the after-images to explode once more.
She was trying to rip her arms off.
All this had happened in the span of a rapid couple of heartbeats. Choking down nausea, I added my voice to the telepathic screams rippling across the link and struck the air with wings and wizardry –
Urgency compelled me – stupidity and overconfidence were its accomplices –
The heretic arch-sorcerer burst free of my diamond even as I aimed myself to fly past him. Eight huge, leg-like appendages, bristling with razor-sharp hairs, came from his back; five were black, three on one side and two on the other; the final three legs were bigger, grey in hue. A nimbus of fire began to coalesce in his suddenly-clawed hand.
He flew to intercept me, spraying flame through my shields, his friend just behind him, aiming a wand at me that produced a jet of solid green light.
I let them come.
I was already using my imps, but for my other flying eldritches I’d kept hold of my sylph and wraith, figuring they were too valuable to waste in this chaos. The wraith-form wouldn’t necessarily protect me against the heretics’ attacks, depending on their eldritch quality…
I had to go on the offensive. Even as they sped to cut me off, I brought Gilaela into the space just before me, moved forwards into her and joined with her.
Flood Boy, I thought, and could no longer remember the gesture to call on him.
He was gone – I’d never joined with him.
Now they were trying to kill Tanra – I could see it happening right there in front of me –
That brought the anger back, and when the demon-clad arch-sorcerer came close to colliding with me, my horn burst into brilliant light.
Our shields impacted, frazzling out, but my super-reinforced circle stayed active – the fiery claw he brought swiping down at my upper chest with all his strength was repelled. I swerved into him even as I continued towards Killstop, and my headbutt connected with his face.
The insubstantial nature of the horn meant that the heretic was not in himself wounded – it passed straight into his cheek, and pierced instead every impure eldritch he was joined with.
He recoiled, falling back into his ally. His demonic claw only faltered, flickering off and on, but his strange spidery-legs cracked and crumbled in an instant.
“No,” he gasped.
I didn’t want to stop – the heretic mage was putting his hand on the archmage’s shoulder, as if he was concerned – these two darkmages were actual friends – but I had Tanra to be concerned about –
Then a voice above me grated hard words, and it were as though the dark sky itself spoke:
“Take this as my apology, Feychilde.”
I went to glance upwards, as did the heretics –
Then Winterprince pierced them both through with a single huge spear of ice that formed and descended faster than a comet.
Pinned together by a twenty-foot-long, six-inch-thick icicle, they both plummeted, presumably very, very dead.
I couldn’t afford to care.
“Killstop!” I panted.
Together me and wizard raced towards her.
How much longer could she endure what the heretic was doing to her? I could hear her staccato screaming, hear the cackling laughter of the vile creature atop her –
Then Timesnatcher was there.
He came down through the three oblivious heretic-diviners who were occupied watching the macabre spectacle, and he littered the grass with their severed heads and body-parts.
But before the chunks of flesh could even thud into the ground he’d already tried to kill Tanra’s torturer a thousand times.
In response, all she did was back away across the heath towards the flaming trees, as though it were just a game, evading his strikes by skipping and bounding, barely using flight.
I’d seen these antics before. It was what Timesnatcher did to Starsight, when the tainted obsidian had subverted his will in the demon-tower. It was how the superior arch-diviner might treat the lesser, when assaulted…
The superior…?
And across the link I could hear the mutters, the shocked expressions:
“It’s her! Look!”
“Who?”
“Everseer!”
“Are you sure?”
“Everseer?”
My mouth was suddenly dry.
Everseer, Timesnatcher’s predecessor… She didn’t die – she turned traitor?
Although it didn’t seem that Timesnatcher was getting anywhere, neither did she seem confident-enough to retaliate against him, preferring to retreat. And it meant she abandoned Killstop.
It only took us a few seconds to arrive at her side, but Timesnatcher and Everseer had long-since disappeared into the smoke-choked treeline by then.
“Go after Time!” I yelled at the ice elemental. “Clear the smoke, I’ll help Killstop!”
“My very thoughts.” Winterprince nodded curtly to me then flew away.
“Killstop!” I brought Avaelar out and he gingerly lifted her mask, breathing into her face; I put one hand on the top of her head, gently stroking her, as I threw up some shields with the other. “Killstop! Can you hear me?”
The girl was motionless. I didn’t want to touch her arms, touch her anywhere, really, in case I made things worse. I just tipped a few healing potions down her throat and wrung at my hands.
“These injuries are grievous,” my sylph reported in a grave voice after a few moments. “Her arms stretched beyond their capacity, ligaments and tendons disintegrated – wounds I cannot heal. Yet they retain their structure. The internal organs, however, are in far worse of a condition. There is little remaining inside her that approximates its former shape and function.”
“What?” I cried. “But surely you can –“
I had to turn aside, form blades, to repel the dirt-elemental that had charged over at us.
“With the aid of yon philtres I have been able to stabilise her condition, in its last moments, yet unless an arch-druid attends her swiftly I cannot say –“
“Join with me again!” I barked.
I glanced over the battle, but the ground made a poor vantage point, and I couldn’t tell what the hell was happening. As I did so I sent out the telepathic call to Fang, to Sunspring, to Jaevette, anyone who was listening. Meanwhile, Avaelar dutifully complied with my command, hastening to my side; I waved my hand through him and started sprouting my wings, still crouching beside Tanra.
I felt sick. Everseer hadn’t been trying to rip Killstop’s arms off – she’d just been using them as leverage to better-pulverise the girls innards.
Still, we could be thankful she hadn’t just chopped her into pieces. Did this turn of events mean Everseer couldn’t kill her – or just that she didn’t want to?
“Timesnatcher’s down!” Winterprince roared over the link.
I cast my eyes over towards the treeline in horror.
Not two seconds later, a huge blue condor landed beside me, and Shadowcloud’s lightning took shape like a flickering, blinding elemental not ten feet away.
“Thanks, Glimmer,” I murmured.
“Go help him,” came the druidess’s voice from the tremendous beak, sounding rougher around the edges than I’d ever noticed before – less highborn, more… coastal brogue? “I got this.”
“You’ve got a shield around you,” I told her, then leapt into the air.
To my north, I could see that Em was still fighting the heretic-wizard, but she was being aided by Spirit or someone; an enchanter had created a number of duplicates of my girlfriend, sending each of them whizzing around the sky to disorient her opponent. Stormsword had the upper-hand over the Hierarch and she was driving her away –
Beyond her, even from the air it was impossible to tell. The battle had only been going on for about three or four minutes, and already there was so much loss of life…
I focussed my thoughts.
Timesnatcher…
As I came within fifty yards of the treeline Timesnatcher emerged, soaring out of the smoke, a body in his arms.
My first thought was Everseer, then –
No.
It was Winterprince, his armour evaporated. A short-ish, thin man in a torn, grey-blue robe; he had only the one boot, the other leg missing below the knee-area. His eyes were closed as though in slumber. He had a frown on his face, but he didn’t look to be in pain.
Blood was welling up through the robed form of the wizard, dripping onto the ground beneath the arch-diviner as he flew the body out of the burning forest.
It was soon apparent that, while there was enough left of Winterprince to identify him, most of his central mass was gone.
What was more, I could feel it.
It, not him.
The arch-wizard was dead.
Instinctively, I echoed the Hierarch-sorcerer he’d killed. There was no other word for it:
“No…”
I hadn’t liked him. In fact, as far as I was aware no one liked him. He killed Flood Boy…
That didn’t stop it from hurting, though – in fact it almost made it worse. Not that he’d ever made anything easy, but had anyone ever really tried to get along with him? To get to know him?
Now he was this empty sack of skin and bones – the back of his skull was missing, and its contents – and all I could feel was cold hatred, the sensation physically running up my arms.
Everseer.
A number of nearby champions flew over to regard the body. The magisters and many other champions continued the fight as, here, for a moment or two, there was relative silence, a sense of solemnity.
“He’s gone,” the giant condor said in a resigned tone. Killstop was asleep, cradled in her talons.
“Speed his soul,” Spirit said, uncharacteristically sombre.
“It’s time,” Shadowcloud said from behind his misty mask. He alone of them sounded furious, and lightning was congealing on his gloved fingers, dripping off to float on the air about him.
What does he mean? It’s time to kick ass?
But Glimmermere cried out: “No!”
The condor shape-shifted, and the elf-maiden with dark skin and seaweed-coloured hair appeared; she twisted in the air and threw Killstop at me, then cast her arms about the wizard.
I caught Killstop, satyr-strength helping immensely, and stared, perplexed.
What’s time? Does he mean ‘Timesnatcher’? Or – oh…
“Yeah, that’s my guess too,” Zel said morosely.
“You can’t!” Glimmermere was crying behind her shark mask. “Timesnatcher, tell him.”
“It’s his life or several others’,” the arch-diviner said quietly. “I can see that much.”
“Thank you, Timesnatcher,” Shadow said, his voice suddenly thick.
“Who cares?” Glimmermere burst out. “You can’t die…”
“I’m dead already,” Shadow replied at once, and I shivered, hearing those words from a fellow champion, a fellow Sticktowner. “Those things in Zadhal, they killed me. This…” The wizard gestured at himself, made a little tricky by the druidess glued to him. “This is just an elongated last gasp.”
“Laithor…” Glimmermere whispered.
“Imrye.” It looked like he was meeting her gaze through the eye-slits. “Yes, please. You have to do this – let me go. Remember what you said.”
“I – I will.” Then her voice harshened, as though the last sixty seconds had exposed a bitterness in her even she hadn’t known existed: “I have.”
“I love you.” His voice was harder than it ought to have been, like he fought to free the words; his anger-fuelled decision to give his life had taken the reins of his destiny, and even the three words he most needed to say before he left us were a deviation from his course.
He pulled off her mask as she pulled off his, and they kissed, a single, deep kiss.
Then without waiting for another word to be spoken the arch-wizard shot upwards into the sky, moving so swiftly and smoothly it looked like he was falling in reverse.
“Laithor…” The elfin-faced, ebony druidess stared after him.
“Come on, let’s get back to it.” Timesnatcher darted to the ground, arranged Winterprince’s remains in a respectful placement on the grass, then returned to us. “We can’t let old Laithor go out without a bang, eh, Imrye?”
There was just the right amount of sorrow mixed with the levity with which he spoke – just the right amount to make the druidess square her shoulders, look him in the mask, and give him a firm nod.
I glanced down before following the others, and shifted Killstop in my arms so that I could spin a shield about the body of the fallen champion – just in case. I didn’t want a heretic reanimating him or a demon gnawing on him. Even still, I felt the way the barrier trembled, as though it didn’t want to exist – or didn’t want to have to.
We’ll be back for you soon, Winterprince.
* * *
As the next minute ticked by, the battle all melded into a mess of inconsistent snippets, memories that made no sense. I lost count of the times I saw someone spin through the air, bleeding or blackened and apparently dead, only for them to be back seconds later, whizzing past me, seemingly unwounded. Mountainslide had looked like he was dying; now the dwarf wizard was ripping through his foes. At times I felt my blades pierce cloth and flesh and bone, slicing through people I didn’t even see, inflicting injuries the severity of which I couldn’t even guess at.
The wind whipped at us, for the first time in the battle flowing in a single direction; the hurricane pulled at our masks and robes and hair, and I saw one heretic lose his grip on a wand, the ensorcelled twig carried off in an instant. As I looked up, I saw a thundercloud the likes of which I’d never before witnessed, spreading like oil across the heavens.
I joined Em and Bor where the wind was a little less single-minded. Both of them independently gave me ‘the look’, indicating the still-slumbering Tanra in my arms, but I gave each champion the same helpless shrug in response. Instead of keeping my eyes on my teammates I went on the offensive, and threw everything I had at the Hierarch they’d been fighting. Everything the Hierarch wouldn’t instantly incinerate, at least.
I must’ve dropped a bintaborax on her at least twenty times but it never got old – the sixth-rank demons were relatively impervious to her spells, and by the time I rotated back to the first of the three its melted edges had been repaired back to their usual spiky sheen. They served for brilliant distractions; dodging fifty-ton bundles of iron that could reappear anywhere in an instant probably wasn’t easy all on its own – but in addition to the confusing array of fake attacks coming from the Stormswords spread across the sky, covering for the real strikes? It was starting to get to her: Hierarch Thirteen’s responses were becoming sloppy –
I brought out Mrs. Cuddlesticks so that the demon would fall directly on top of the heretic, leaving not three feet of clearance between my enemy and the portal over her head; a series of lightning-bolts, ninety-five-percent illusory, leapt out at her –
She feinted left, straight into Em’s true lightning-bolt.
Gasping, robe and flesh smoking, she dropped like a stone – and the real Stormsword followed her, pushed her with a crushing weight of air, striking her down at the ground –
An impact like that would turn the heretic to pulp.
“Storm!” I yelled at her mentally. I had no idea what I wanted to say, only – I couldn’t watch –
But I did watch – and looked on as the dying Hierarch seemed to open a crack in the earth beneath her.
Within an instant both arch-wizards had vanished into the ground below the heath, and then a series of explosions suddenly rippled across the hillock, making the heather tremble and the grass wave – I saw some of the grounded combatants lose their footing as the earth shook.
“Over there!” Zel cried.
She dragged my eyes over to the crater.
The two arch-wizards must’ve been inside the huge ball of dirt that burst out of the crater-wall, must’ve still been locked in their struggle in there – the massive clump of earth soared effortlessly against the gale, losing mass and shedding mud by the second.
I wanted to help her, but how? She might’ve been winning in there… If I intruded…
Better than her dying again, I thought grimly.
I bent my wings against the tempest-wind and gave chase, but the chunk of earth was outpacing me, swivelling and swerving chaotically –
Then I went deaf and blind, and I was surely not alone.
White thunder rocked me, shaking the very air, the ground below me roaring and hissing where the lightning struck it.
I could hear Shadowcloud’s voice, a wordless expression of release that mingled with the thunder, raining down on us from the sky.
The wind halted abruptly, the air going dead. I couldn’t feel even the slightest breeze through my ethereal feathers.
When I could see again, Glimmermere was up there, descending with his body, and the battlefield – the battlefield had changed. Smoking holes riddled the hill, each of them roughly the size of a decent-sized house.
The bodies of those he’d actually struck – there was nothing left of them whatsoever.
Their force was weaker by thirty, maybe forty. Thirty or forty heretics, gone, turned to ash in a single action. Many had been sorcerers, shielded or eldritch-skinned; two of their arch-druids were gone, the absences plain due to the fact they’d both been immense monstrosities, looming over everything – until they just weren’t anymore.
It was a hell of a lot of kills, enough to tip things in our favour.
But Shadowcloud was gone.
It wasn’t worth it.
And I couldn’t see Em.
“Stormsword? Stormsword!”
My voice was lost in the commotion. Magisters in the link were expressing their elation and went straight back to the fight with renewed vigour, the kind of vigour even a druid couldn’t give you – but as for me, I rejoined the fray frantically, searching the battlefield. My taste for blood was entirely sated – I’d seen enough death – but the battle went on and I couldn’t see Em.
I entirely-accidentally spearheaded a charge through a series of barriers erected by lesser sorcerers in my desperation to see a flash of her lightning, her robe, somewhere in the tumult…
“There, Kas.”
Zel showed me her, the hair loose of her hood, streaming in the wind within which she’d armoured herself.
Stormsword had won, it seemed, given the amount of blood covering her that did not appear to be her own.
I sighed with relief, watching her while, oblivious of my gaze, she re-entered the conflict as though nothing had occurred.
Some of the magisters were questioning what had actually happened and I didn’t know what to say. One of them suggested something about the Third Law of Something Something, and the confusion continued until Timesnatcher spoke up:
“That was Shadowcloud’s parting gift to us. His soul’s one with the wind now.“
“Orovon bless his name, then,” I caught Zakimel saying in a tone of reverence and heartfelt gratitude. I could see the arch-magister on the western edge, leaping from dirt-elemental to dirt-elemental, popping their heads with some kind of sonic dagger and leaving them crumbling away in his wake.
“His name was Laithor,” Glimmermere whispered over the link. She’d gone back to healing, Laithor’s corpse at rest in her talons wherever she went. “He said he – he wanted everyone to know. And – and me. My name is Imrye.”
“It’s your intention to make your identity public?” Zakimel asked.
“It – yes. Yes, it is. I need to be me, for once.”
“Very well, Imrye. It shall be entered into your public records, and the criers shall proclaim it openly from now onwards.”
“K-Kas…?” came a dreamy murmur from below me.
I was busy moving a swarm of imps into the faces of some heretics, and it took me a moment to process the fact Tanra was awake.
“Killstop!” I cried, glancing down at her masked face squished against my chest. “You’re – you’re okay?
“Zakky’s so proper,” she said softly. “What’s his story, do you suppose? It’s so annoying, not being able to see.”
“No Killstop, I’m pretty sure you should be resting – no – not squirming out of my…”
Not if I’d had ten arms would I have been able to stop her; she was an arch-diviner and she was still outfitted with several arch-wizards’ flight-spells. Sighing, I gave up and let her go.
Whatever my reservations, they didn’t become regrets. Before I even processed the fact the weight of her was no longer encumbering me, my eyes were informing me she’d torn through three heretics’ hands with her knives, sending their precious fingers flying off.
We seemed to be getting a handle on things, and I built up in my mind the notion that they would soon break off and flee – we could lick our wounds, end the conflict – but just when I started to get complacent my advisor piped up.
“Glyphstone messaging incoming.”
Right on queue, I heard the familiar tingling sound emanating not only from my own pocket but from those all around me.
“Anyone know what it says?” someone said, a trace of their exerted grunting coming through over the link as well.
“I’ll check,” I offered. My shields were well-fixed, and I’d have paid a fair few plat to be able to spend a minute not watching my friends kill people –
“Finished,” Timesnatcher said.
“Beat me to it,” I heard Killstop mutter.
“We’re needed up north,” he continued. “They’re hitting the Maginox. We all know why. They need back-up, or we could lose everything.”
Zakimel wasted no time organising the rearguard, barking orders at a terrifying rate, but I took a moment to process Timesnatcher’s meaning.
I shivered.
It’s all about the twins.
* * *
Once before in the recent past they’d tried it – the Chaos-Makers, they’d been calling them back then, according to the magister rattling off information over the link. They’d brought almost five hundred soldiers to the battle, and for seventy-two hours they maintained a foothold on the grounds – but eventually they’d given up their siege, retreated to the Thirteen Candles. Offensive magic could exit the Maginox’s shields but couldn’t enter. Defending the place was a doddle, and the stubborn proto-heretics had discovered this within minutes – yet it took them days to withdraw.
And that had basically been the end of the Chaos-Makers. Three years later, ‘Hierarch One’ emerged.
But the Srol Heretics never tried it. Not enough lives that could be easily ended, so the speculation went. Too much resistance. More so than their predecessors, the Srol were fixated on massacre.
The magister reciting a history-lesson sounded nervous as we cracked through the timeless airs over the forest, leaving behind a full fifty percent of our host. They would fight a steady retreat while we fortunate ones coasted the chronomancy of three of the city’s greatest arch-diviners towards Hightown. I supposed the guy had good reason to sound nervous – we were almost certainly heading into even greater danger, and Everseer had left the fight early; could it be she would have made her way north ahead of us?
As fast as Timesnatcher, Killstop and Zakimel could move us, I was certain Everseer could move even faster on her own.
And as much as I would’ve liked the opportunity to think about the past, the magister’s lessons were a distraction. It was my responsibility to think about the future.
What could the twins have to do with this?
The heretics never attacked the Maginox – not until Saff and Tarr took their first step on the path that could lead to them becoming, what, the greatest wizards since the days of Wyre Eldervane?
Was that it? Did the Srol just want the boys’ firepower on their side?
It was strange, though, I thought. The sorcerer I’d just been fighting spoke about dragons – did that relate to the vision Timesnatcher mentioned to me? There had to be a hundred crazies within a stone’s throw of my house that’d give you a hundred different stories of Mund’s impending doom, and everything ending in dragon-fire was certainly not unpopular…
‘After she used Feychilde to kill them’, that was what Lovebright said… and I understood it now.
She was going to use me to kill Saffys and Tarrance.
Why me? Because they trusted me?
Whatever the reason, Tyr Kayn had had her master-plan, and acted mere days after the twins became wizards. If I was right then surely now, after the ruin of the dragon’s plots and her departure from Mund, the heretics could be made to see sense? It was over. It was all over now. They didn’t need to arm themselves with the twins – they could stand down…
No. That wouldn’t happen. The dragon-apocalypse was probably nothing more than something they taught their lesser members, lies to fill the ears of their newbies like the boy I’d fought. Even if we’d headed off their supposed end-of-the-world scenario, they’d press on with their mission. The truth was probably just they wanted the twin arch-wizards to combat us – and to prevent us from wiping them out once the twins came into the fullness of their power.
Stormsword veered closer to me as we swept across the dark sky.
“Thinking about Zyger again, are we?” she asked. “Don’t even let –“
“No,” I cut her off. “Just about… the heretics.” I met her eyes. “Did you… you killed Thirteen?”
She shook her head, pouting slightly in discontent. “She had a healing potion – she escaped me.” Then I caught her slight, mischievous smile as she whispered, “Until ze next time.”
“You prefer fighting them to a dragon.”
“To a mind-controlling dragon.” She cast me a quizzical look. “What is it?”
I just shook my head.
Ashes, drifting out of my diamonds…
“Nothing,” I said.
We flew on, and I was only more troubled than before.
I watched you kill, Em. I watched you kill, and you didn’t even care.
“It… she…”
Don’t even try to explain it, Zel. Don’t you dare take her side on this. What would Nentheleme think?
“You think Nentheleme is opposed to death? Kas, you – you don’t understand anything…”
I don’t care if I understand. I can still judge. And it’s wrong.
“You’re a sorcerer-born – you’re supposed to –“
Love death? Did Dustbringer love death when he worked tirelessly just to buy his daughter some extra time? You were awake when I spoke to Killstop about it, you remember. Does Shallowlie love death, the one who stopped you killing yourself with my body along for the ride? Netherhame? You –
“You’re supposed to accept it.”
I had no response. My mind was blank, fit only to echo her.
Accept it…
“Accept it.”
* * *
They weren’t assaulting the shields. It was something else entirely.
We came roaring onto the scene and I could almost see the waves of time, rippling out through the rain-filled air – from us, from other arch-diviners on the grounds – everything was moving at different speeds. Still, I could instantly tell what was happening.
Mounds of earth in humanoid shapes were locked in struggle about the library – champions and arch-magisters were rallying crowds of mages in a valiant effort to stop the heretics from landing destructive attacks on the building. Fiends covered the library’s roofs, but they were Magisterium-bound demons, launching spell-bolts or strange missiles at the besiegers.
I instinctively dipped towards Starsight, taking a number of blasts aimed at the library’s walls across my shields instead – Star was darting across the parapets, contending with a Hierarch diviner. As I arrived I immediately set about surrounding him in my shield and letting force-blades ripple out at the heretic; the darkmage skipped backwards on the air…
Beyond, I saw the effect as Timesnatcher, Killstop and Zakimel arrived – it was instantaneous, the tide of the attackers falling back, dismayed – Tanra ripped a couple of regiments of wights to pieces as the two men descended on the more-mortal opposition.
Then she was there, in the thick of it, dancing on the wind with her blonde curls bobbing: the Hierarch formerly known as a champion, as Everseer.
Everyone around her drew away, even the heretics.
“What a merry little get-together,” she enunciated, staring at her rivals.
Tanra, Irimar and Zakimel, by some unspoken agreement that didn’t come across on the link, converged on her in a single chronomantic blur.
Stormsword ‘took care of’ the heretics who were throwing fireballs at my section of the library. When Starsight successfully took advantage of his opponent’s imperceptible slip-ups and caught him, raising his gold dagger to strike down at the man’s unprotected chest, I flew away towards the deadly duel, the quartet of arch-diviners.
They’d kept her trapped, the three of them forming a loose ring around Everseer. The glow of their passage flowed here and there on the night airs, but stayed in a relatively-confined area. I could even pick out snippets of the action if I watched a particular area very intensely, see how they were faring against her…
One of them striking at her in not quite the right spot, another desperately trying to twist out of the way of her attack, and the third doing their best to help the second not get skewered.
Every snippet was the same, Everseer dominating, the others switching position from instant to instant.
It hardly filled me with confidence.
“You can do it,” Zel whispered. “You don’t have to rely on them. Cast your net over them, use the inward-spikes… It’ll leave those who bear you no ill-will untouched.”
I don’t know if that would count Timesnatcher.
“What a pity…”
I know you hate other diviners, but really, Zel, that’s low.
Of all things, the last I expected was to hear her burst into tears.
What is it? Zel?
“N-n-nothing…”
Drop on it…
I got close enough to loop my diamond around them.
It only seemed to take them a second to realise that Everseer couldn’t go beyond a certain threshold, that something was holding her back. I assumed they knew I was floating here thirty feet beneath them.
“S-s-see Kas… T-Timesnatcher’s… he’s…”
I know, Zel. It wouldn’t harm him.
“Do it!” Zakimel snapped over the link, his voice echoing strangely. “Before she breaks it!”
“Feychilde…” Timesnatcher said in a tone of warning. He wasn’t warning me against it, though. He was warning me against inaction.
Then Killstop submitted her opinion: “No, don’t!”
Their voices rolled about inside my head, the chronomantic effect warping the sounds into guttural or sibilant refractions of the originals.
“Damn it all!” I roared back.
I brought the diamond down instead, descending at the same time, swinging it at the earth. It would pass through the soil and, trapped in its boundaries, she’d collide with the ground, knocking her out, letting one of our druids get their hands on her –
“What does it even matter?” Zel said bitterly. “They’ll only kill her anyway.”
Too little, too late.
The diamond was still fifty feet from the grass when she twisted her daggers at my shields, a rhythmic series of blows, like someone chipping away at the corner of a window, steadily tapping it with a little pebble – she shattered the barrier.
I made a new diamond, made the blades I should’ve made last time, but she pirouetted, her spellbound knives slicing them away from my surfaces, like a gardener expertly strimming the thorns from a stem.
And then she was away, snapping a magister’s neck with a slap from the heel of her hand; the motion wasn’t even entirely designed for the poor guy – she was primarily throwing her dagger at another magister, who took it in the throat – then she was on the victim’s chest, pulling her knife free, moving away again –
The others followed her and, already, there were two deaths – on my head.
Answers. I need answers.
I looked towards the edge of the confrontation; there had to be a heretic I could take, interrogate –
“You need to get your head in the game!” Zel bit at me.
Go to sleep, Zel.
“No! Kas, you aren’t –“
I said go – to – sleep!
“If you aren’t going to listen, I’ll…”
As I realised, she realised I realised and her voice dropped away.
“N-no. Kas, please –“
I… understand now. I understand it all.
How had the story-book put it again? Something about how the imp used an illusion to supply a false name to its captor, so it could get away again once the sorcerer wasn’t looking. It got found out because it didn’t perform its task correctly, cutting corners in order to be freed from its new master early. It didn’t respond correctly.
Here she was, and not for the first time. My willpower, the overriding urge to get her to shut her face, should’ve been just as overriding to her as it was to me. She should’ve found herself forced to shut up.
But no. Not Zel.
“Kas…”
I’d read things about eldritches and their names, but I hadn’t paid much attention – as an archmage, I didn’t need to. I looked at them and apparently they just had to submit – I didn’t need their names, and I could take them freely if I wanted once they were bound.
I could take them freely, once they were bound – from a previously-unbound eldritch.
Zelurra. She wasn’t an illusionist, though. She had –
Olbru. Whose own name would be another lie…
“L-look Kas, there’s a lot more going on here than you realise, and it’s really important that you not lose your head –“
I trusted you. Both of you!
“You can’t know! You can’t know what it’s like, to be me!”
I rejected her, in every part of my being, and she was pushed straight out of me, hanging disoriented on the air before me.
I raised my hand; satyr reflexes let me snatch her up in my fist despite her sudden lunge away.
“To think, I listened to all your lies!” I growled in her tiny face.
Some heretics flew at me; I batted them away like they were just flies buzzing around me, still staring at the fairy.
The little queen was staring back defiantly, struggling against my grip. She didn’t seem to be gripped by any special agony from my gaze. “You’re sceptical, too sceptical for your own damn good.” She sighed, relaxed a little, and turned her head aside. “Too many hell-cursed arch-diviners, too much mess… I never saw this. Not one moment of it. I thought… But no. I wondered, when you’d figure it all out.”
“You wondered…” My voice faded away.
The extent of the betrayal was only now beginning to dawn on me.
Her eyes widened. “No, you can’t kill me, not now! I can’t restart the cycle, not when –“
She cut herself off.
“When what, Zel? What is your real name?”
I gazed deep into those wide, miniscule eyes, and for the first time I could sense it.
A hold over her so profound and so submerged, that since the day we met I’d taken it for a part of her own soul. But it wasn’t. It was something else – someone else.
“Who?” I whispered. “Who is your true master?”
Sudden, sharp pain and an intense kind of itching spread my fingers apart, an automatic reaction – enhanced durability and reflexes meant little to a sly diviner who’d spent precious seconds planning just the right way to escape my grip.
My hand split open, just for an instant – I saw the tiny blade in her hands – then there was a green flash and she was gone.
Gone.
Zel was gone.
My first instinct was to open the jadeway, follow her, extract answers – but my hand halted even as it started the gesture.
How did I know this wasn’t going to land me in even deeper trouble? If I couldn’t trust her – this was Zel – she was so unpredictable –
“Feychilde!” Storm yelled over the link. “Shield needed!”
I met her at the corner of the library, where she’d moved aside the earth to form a deep trench like an empty moat, and together we repelled and cremated a legion of dog-sized ants that had burrowed under us and were chomping away the foundations with their vicious mandibles.
I moved my body through the air, my fingers through their motions, letting them steer themselves, my higher consciousness all but removed.
Nothingness was what I really experienced. A sensation like falling. Falling, without caring.
Everything was lies. No one could be trusted. Everyone was killing.
Nothingness was peace. But it couldn’t last.
When the tide of battle took me away from Em, I was glad – the last glimpse of her I got, she’d hefted a band of panicked darkmages with one hand, then hurled them down at the ground at a speed that would crack then like eggs.
Like she’d done with Hierarch Thirteen, only these were lesser magic-users, with far less chance of escaping their impending dooms.
I’d drifted away, wraith-form turned up and rain falling right through me; now I was almost invisible, hanging over the edge of the war-zone that surrounded the library. It was relatively quiet out here, except for the link – occasionally someone would ask for me, but they probably assumed I was busy elsewhere, and what with my current mood being due to a snarl of fate it was possible even Timesnatcher couldn’t tell what I was up to.
I floated through a patch of trees, their almost-bare branches left untouched by the battle, and came near to a group of heretic healers. An illusory construct was shedding a white light across their work-space. A few slumbering individuals were stretched out at their feet, and most of them had their eyes, minds, spells all focussed on the fight – they were gazing out at their colleagues embroiled in the battle, sealing their wounds from a distance. But one of them was bent over a hideously-scorched heretic, laying their hands on directly, in order to better-effect their magic.
Even without my usual perception-boosts, something about the hunched-over druid called out to me. A kind of recollection.
The poise. The slight stature. The tapping foot, the simple motion repeated endlessly as though in annoyance, nervousness.
The grubby hand with which he worked his healing, the almost-emaciated elfin digits caked in mud and blood.
All of it – familiar. Coldly familiar.
There was nothing that prompted my memories about the robe itself, a shapeless, soiled thing of burlap, or the purple cowl or simple belt. In fact, they looked wrong on him.
And when he slowly retracted the hand, spinning on the spot to gaze up at me from the shadows of his hood, I knew.
I knew.
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