COBALT 7.7: THAT HIDEOUS GRIN
“But how can you tell? If you are wrought awry, may not the instruments of self-measurement also tend toward disarray? How can you hope to see yourself clear when it is your very blindness you look to find? Perhaps there is no such thing as the well-wrought soul. And if this is the case, what does it mean to think of yourself as deficient?”
– from ‘The Book of Lithiguil’, 13:180-185
The tower room had bare-brick walls and it was tiny – there was a desk and a bed and a glass window but all of them were narrow and grimy, scarcely adequate even by a Sticktowner’s standards. It was not a chamber made for hosting guests, yet I was tucked away in here with five ladies. I stayed in the corner near the door, while Kani and the twin sorceresses sat on the bed with their backs against the wall. Netherhame was perched on the desk, one leg dangling, the other tucked up to her chest with her arms wrapped around it; a pure purple nethermist seeped softly from her robe. Shallowlie was by the window, looking out at the fading sunlight glancing off Hightown’s multicoloured domes and roofs.
I felt more nervous as each second passed. Getting here had been bad enough – the Tower of the Seven-Star Swords commanded a clear view of Gilderow Avenue, the Lower Tivertain road on which it was located. The Tower rose high above the three golden arches that formed sky-ways between the spires on either side of the street. Shallowlie had advised me that giving everyone wraith-form wasn’t on the cards, so we had to make do with a five-fold blanket of enchanter’s invisibility… something I was certain the eolastyr could see through. However, according to the others observing over the link, we had successfully entered this particular room without causing Mistress Arithos any visible disturbance: Sunspring and Wanderfox were in bug-form on her balcony, relaying their findings. At one point the enchanters showed us the room through their senses, translated as best as they could manage for those of us with less insectile perceptions.
Netherhame had shown me how to bestow a long-lasting shield-perception, involving a complex spiral pattern performed as the force-line is moved from the sorcerer’s third eye to the recipient’s. Now the druids had our boons effective upon them – they would be able to warn us if the eolastyr raised barriers, or if ours went too far, becoming visible in her chamber atop the highest spire. Our arch-enchanters weren’t only keeping us all in the loop – they were also keeping the otherwise-observant sorcerers in the lower sections of the tower from noticing what was going on, from interfering in the operation.
Everything was going smoothly… so far.
I tried to distract myself from the interminable wait by talking to Netherhame about undoing infinity runes and unravelling the spells bound into ensorcelled items, but she was trying to distract herself from me, it seemed, by staring at Arxine and Orieg. The girls’ shields were still active, at a fixed distance, and the others agreed with me that their strength was unbelievable, unprecedented.
The two foreigners were sitting on either side of Kani, another foreigner, holding hands across her lap. The cleric had apparently taken to her charges, as anyone who even met her once would expect; the redhead had her arms protectively about the both of them, glaring back at Netherhame. The unknown elder sorceresses weren’t getting the same warm treatment from the priestess of Wythyldwyn as the youngsters, despite my reassurances. Not that the veteran champions exactly helped: when I’d exhorted their virtues Ly had just snorted and continued staring, while Min obviously had nothing to say on the matter.
I’d given Tanra my estimates on the girls’ shields, and with even this meagre smattering of information she was able to put together the perfect location. If we brought the twin sorceresses out of the room and travelled five yards along the curving landing, their shields would penetrate Arithos’s chamber high above us, covering a section of it in their defences.
They would protect Ciraya as she confronted the arch-demon, provided she stayed in her half of the room.
“The magister’s going up,” Glancefall commented, “past your post in three, two, one…”
Even without the augmented senses of vampire or fairy, I caught the tramp of her boots echoing along the landing. As Ciraya went up the next flight of stairs and the sound of her footfalls slowly dissipated, the tension got real. She just had to cross the span to the central spire, and she’d nearly be there… just a few more minutes…
Timesnatcher’s words, about people dying because of my actions, suddenly started to seem horribly portentous.
What if I get the twins killed? I thought. What if Ciraya dies? – she isn’t even an archmage, and we’re sending her in there…
But there was no other way. We had to do it together. It was the sense of heroism, taking it all on yourself, that got you and others killed. When you reached out, you were stronger. You could do things people never thought possible.
“Remember, Ciraya,” I thought. “Four feet from the desk.”
“I know!” she growled.
“Sorry – just wasn’t sure I told you already.”
Some strained chuckles came back over the link in response. (I’d reminded her at least three times.)
“Say it again,” Ciraya purred, “and if we make it through this I’ll tattoo it across your forehead.”
“And I’ll hold him down,” Em piped up. “Let her focus, Feychilde.”
“Hold down, and tattoo, a wraith? I’d like to see you try!”
“I can ensorcel something,” Ciraya bit back. “You can’t wraith out of bindlaces.”
Can’t I? I wondered. How curious.
“O-okay, kids, enough of that, now,” Sunspring’s trembling voice came through.
“Quite,” Zakimel thought, encapsulating all his derision into one taut little syllable.
“Okay, okay,” Killstop cut in, “just so long as Ciraya’s aware she needs to be forty-eight inches from the desk.”
“Good call, Killstop,” Spirit said in a dry tone.
I heard Fang and Brokenskull laughing this time, and a couple of the older champions – Dimdweller, Doomspeaker, Voicenoise – loosing sighs.
“Timesnatcher!” one of the others enchanters, Dancefire, blurted suddenly.
Irimar’s smooth, deep voice came in over the link. “Evening, ladies and gentlemen.”
Just in time to be the hero, I thought wryly. Indeed, I heard a very different kind of collective sigh pass through the telepathic space, sighing that carried a single message:
Relief.
I may or may not have joined in myself, somewhat.
“Good to have you back, boss,” I said, without any trace of sarcasm intended, doing my best to extend the hand of friendship.
“Good to be back. I had some things to deal with –“
“Enough,” Zakimel interrupted. “Let me fill you in.”
A few people were murmuring, none of the conversations interesting-enough to catch my attention, until –
“I’m near the door,” Ciraya said. “Man, I don’t – I don’t feel well…”
“You can do this,” Em said, managing to sound pretty convincing actually. “It’s just an ordinary conversation. She doesn’t know anything.”
“We’re ready to back you up,” I joined in.
“It’s the best plan I’ve come up with all day,” Tanra insisted.
“Okay. Drop on the lot of you. I’m going in.”
Everyone fell silent without needing to be told, and into the stillness Glancefall whispered: “She’s in.”
* * *
The enchanters let us observe through Ciraya’s senses while it unfolded. As the encounter progressed, the terror fizzed in my mind like an acid chewing through my skull, eating at my brain, and I longed to cry out – but I couldn’t disturb her now. None of us used the link – not at first.
“Whatever’s the matter, my dear magister?”
The woman behind the desk was old, perhaps in her late sixties, with big droopy-looking ears; but she looked lithe, not scrawny. Her eyes were clear of the redness of age – in fact you would have to say she looked sharp, alert, as she sat there in her chair, dressed in what might’ve been a nice-looking formal robe forty-eight hours ago. Yet she didn’t seem to notice that the chamber was steeped in shadow, the dark-blue sky beyond the tall windows giving barely a spatter of illumination. And, perhaps more importantly, she was surrounded by a scene not unlike the results of Em’s storm in my apartment, that night with Dustbringer: a tumult of papers, a million carefully-inked characters showing across a thousand exposed surfaces, loose leaves half-askew from their bindings, tomes standing on their ends like strange sentinels looking out over a field of carcasses.
What happened here? What was she really looking for?
“It’s serious, I’m afraid, Mistress.”
“Then do come in – sit.” Arithos pointed at the chair in front of the desk with a single languid finger.
Ciraya’s right. There’s definitely something wrong with her.
Oh no. Oh, no, Ciraya, what’re you doing…
The magister went and sat in the damn chair. Eighteen inches from the desk at most.
I grit my teeth. She had to do it, but I didn’t like it. If the eolastyr realised what was happening, she might try to flee before bringing out the whip, change the battlefield without us getting a chance at our objective. Tanra’s plan would come to nothing. Ciraya had to lull her into a false sense of security before we could make our move.
“There’s no explanation for the disappearances. I’ve discussed it with my magistry contacts, some pretty powerful diviners. I know some of them were your friends, Mistress, but it’s a dead end. Something’s blocking them.“
The thing across the desk wasn’t even trying to hide its smile. “And Henthae?”
“Henthae, Zakimel – as far as I can tell, they’re as clueless as the champions… Stormsword said Timesnatcher thinks it’s one of the unknown factors, like Dreamlaughter or some other archmage of similar power-level.”
When Arithos purred, it wasn’t human. It was the tiger inside.
“Hmmmmmmmmmm.”
The eolastyr was staring hungrily at Ciraya – at me, and the rest of us, as we watched through her eyes.
How is she not shaking with fear? I asked myself incredulously.
Ciraya looked away – the young sorceress’s eyes went roaming over the books on the table. I recognised The Science of the Past, its spine askew, its pages spread across the surface of the chaos.
“Feychilde,” Killstop said over the link.
“Come on,” Netherhame said aloud, suddenly hopping down from her perch and standing up tall. “Let’s get into position.”
“Finally,” Kani muttered, frowning. With some difficulty she managed to clamber free of the bed, then turned and helped Orieg and Arxine to their feet. “It’ll all be over in a moment, girls.”
Ciraya was talking: “Did you… get all the information you were looking for?”
Arithos wasn’t replying, and the magister still wasn’t looking back at her, at those too-sharp, too-carnivorous eyes.
“It might be time to back away, magister,” Glancefall said.
“She has a while yet,” Doomspeaker supplied.
“Mistress?” Ciraya hedged, daring to look at the eolastyr once more. Arithos’s face was warped into a look of savage distaste –
“What?” the old woman snapped.
“The book you sent us for? Is it… as informative as you’d hoped?”
The keen old eyes went back to the desk, roving about the scattered papers.
“I think you need to back away now, Ciraya,” Killstop said. “Maybe this won’t work… but we still have to fight her.”
But Ciraya wasn’t moving. She was staring at the husk of her mentor, and while the enchanters weren’t transmitting it, I could almost feel her grief, the overwhelming sorrow.
What was it she’d said, that night I fought Shadowcrafter with Fe as my secret weapon?
“The Seven-Star Swords looked after me when I came here, gave me direction and purpose. You aren’t going to get an objective perspective on them from me.”
She was in a similar situation to Em, brought under the wing of a powerful, controlling influence – if only Em’s were so overtly possessed by Evil…
The six of us were standing on the globe-lit landing now, nothing but a few doors to break up the monotony of the featureless walls. Orieg and Arxine’s shields were there, unbelievably powerful – we were just steps from covering half the eolastyr’s room in an impenetrable shell. I spread my wings from my back, tested my wraith-form, ensuring everything was in its place. The flight-spell was still active under my feet, the energising-spells still racing through my blood.
Still, Ciraya stared at Arithos. At the twentieth-rank demon.
“I’m sorry, Mistress. I…”
As Arithos’s gaze came back to Ciraya’s face – my face – I had to blink away the vision again: one of the doors near us opened suddenly. An adult man stepped out of his room, turned and noticed us.
The sorcerer froze, and I slowly raised an arm in silence, pointing back at his door. Netherhame to my left was making much the same gesture. Then all at once, like he was coming out of a trance, the man nodded violently in thanks – he flung himself back into his room, slamming it shut behind him at first, then, just in the nick of time, realising the noise it would make and catching it, closing it quietly behind him as though to reassure us he’d never been there, never saw us.
I sighed, and returned to the vision.
The eolastyr was speaking: “… quite fine, I assure you, magister… I extend to you my thanks, for all you’ve done to keep an ear on the ground for me.” She waved a hand slowly at the windows, the lightless sky, and Ciraya looked down again. “It can be difficult from up here to keep on top of the little things.”
“Ciraya, you’re right on the edge!” Killstop hissed.
“No problem,” Ciraya said aloud, standing up suddenly, refusing to meet the eolastyr’s gaze.
“Are you quite alright, Ciraya?” the demon asked. “You don’t quite seem to be yourself, today.”
As though she couldn’t help herself, the young sorceress’s eyes were pulled to meet Arithos’s.
A hideous grin was pasted across the Mistress’s lower face.
“She knows!” Dimdweller growled.
“Sure thing, Mistress,” Ciraya said in an unshaken voice. “Just… a long day.”
The sorceress stepped a little to her left, away from the chair, just incidentally removing the obstacle from her avenue of retreat –
Drop it.
Three pulses of the six sylph-wings, along with my spectral lightness and the will-activated flight-spell, let me travel at speeds some diviners might envy.
I leapt at the wall, passing through it, heading up and out into the snowy air.
It was dark enough, and satyr-reflexes only took me so far. I summoned and joined with my vampire as I ascended.
“First line, go!” Killstop cried.“Twins forward!”
As Netherhame and Kani ushered Orieg and Arxine into the correct spot by the wall of the landing, now far below me, I could see the twins’ shield nudging up slightly. It was a vast blue bubble, with its curve near the apex of the barrier now penetrating through the room at the top of the central spire… the chamber we’d all seen through the enchantment’s magic – my target –
I slid into the room at such an angle that I passed through a few flights of stairs before coming up through the floor, surrounded in buzzing azure blades.
Eneleyn Arithos was no longer herself. Her hand gripped the golden whip, its thongs choked with gobbets of flesh; her eyes were empty ink-wells, deeper black than a starless night sky. She leapt over the desk just as the shield settled into place, a diagonal arc of blue sweeping across the space.
Just as Ciraya stumbled back into its protections. Just as I barrelled up out of the ground at the eolastyr, getting between the two of them.
Our foe didn’t know I was coming; Tanra’s gambit was working. Hopefully the demon wouldn’t know about the others either – I could see them, through the windows, growing on the balcony into vast animals, mere instants from imploding the glass, surging into the room through a pulverised wall –
I was at the front of Arxine and Orieg’s shield, my circle extending through it. Mistress Arithos swung out her empty hand, fingers forming hooks, and as the arm stretched out towards us it changed in reality, becoming clawed, purple fur spotted with black stretching up her wrist beneath her sleeve.
The claws of the arch-fiend sank into my shield and burst my force-lines, despite their reinforcements – but it was not a one-sided exchange. My blades did their work, at least in part. At first I felt the bitterness of disappointment, yet as her savage talons hit the colossal, thick shield of the twins and were repelled, there was a single slice of time in which I could see what was going on, a moment where her forwards motion seemed to halt before the backwards motion began. I had chance to see the wounds.
Her flesh was opened right up to the bicep, a spiralling slice-pattern that threatened to let all the meat fall from her arm, ribbons of shredded robe and muscle left hanging.
Still, the demon must’ve used the repulsion from the twins’ barrier to project herself up, away into the air, seeing as she rebounded far from us – she brought the whip high over her head – there was no pain on her face, only mild surprise and, yes, pleasure.
She was happy to be here. I could just tell.
But her turn was over. It was our time now.
Safe within the shielding, Ciraya barked in Netheric, then aimed her fist sidelong at the eolastyr with her elbow locked. The sorceress’s sleeve billowed suddenly, and a sickly green flame coursed up her forearm, becoming a series of ethereal skulls that went streaking through the air at our foe, wailing as they soared, detonating into incandescent explosions when they reached the demon –
The windows and walls exploded in as, two or three seconds after Killstop had given the command, the druids struck – Wanderfox was a titanic red mongoose, Sunspring a green gorilla that could barely fit in the chamber – there was another arch-druid too, a magister like a huge wasp in gold and blue –
Simultaneously, a white sheet of energy passed from one side of the chamber to the other, twenty feet over the eolastyr’s head – it was Em’s sword of lighting slicing off the roof, shearing through the bricks themselves, cutting them in two lengthways. The sky up there should’ve been dark but it was as bright as day, a rainbow of colour as dozens of conjoined lances descended, crackling with frost and electrified magma, twisting about one another –
How many wizards were up there pooling their energies, I couldn’t quite remember – but it was more than a few.
Arithos twisted on the air as though she cavorted to a hell-music only she could hear. Spells bounced off her jet black circlet, the glossy band appearing only briefly then vanishing once more – fireballs and frostbolts rebounded through shields, striking allies, forcing our druids to focus on healing. But for all her supernal dexterity, it wasn’t enough – a tendril of blue flaming lightning latched onto the ribbons of flesh dangling from her arm, seizing them and rippling up them, creeping along the remnants of her arm, entering her torso.
It flashed through her, and for a moment there was only the darkness of her skeleton’s shadow against the whiteness. Every part of her on top of the bone sloughed away in a shower of wet, crispy flesh.
The very instant the wizardry abated, a dizzying array of shapes flitted through the tumbling masonry, the showers of glass-shards: the arch-diviners joined the fray.
They knew. They knew, despite what had just hit her, how invulnerable she truly was. Arithos’s flesh had fallen away, but the skeletal core remained, still acting, warping in patches as the eolastyr’s true form threatened to overtake it.
She was still unharmed inside the body she’d stolen.
She brought the whip down, despite Dimdweller holding onto her weapon-arm; the flight-spells on him weren’t strong-enough to halt her downward motion.
The crack rang out, and we staggered, an unstoppable wave of time halting us.
It was only a second, the eolastyr still basically hovering there as she gently descended – but a lot could happen in a second.
She reached out a dismembered arm of broken bones and the purple-black fur was visible for a moment – she sank her claws towards Dimdweller’s bearded face, right there by her side: the dwarf’s eyes were thrown wide, paralysed –
“Second line, go!” Killstop cried over the link.
Killstop wasn’t here yet – she was in the third line. It was her dispensing the solution to our problem today; Irimar might’ve shown up, but it was still Tanra’s operation. The solution to the whip was to be ready for its magic to be used, then pounce with renewed vigour once the swell of its power passed by, before the others were released from its spell. If we could stop her killing those affected by its power, we could deplete it, or take it from her.
Now, amidst a wave of champions and magisters, Timesnatcher and Zakimel entered – if I hadn’t regularly seen each of them moving at such speeds, if I didn’t have experience picking them out of the streaks of coloured after-images, I wouldn’t have been able to tell what I was looking at. Even still it wasn’t straightforward. I obtained a series of glimpses, little better than an approximation of the real motions, even with all my varied perceptions focussed on the ordeal.
The eolastyr’s claw-tips pierced Dimdweller’s skin, just, but they didn’t get purchase in the meat of his face; she had to turn, twist away, throwing the dwarf aside as Zakimel’s sonic knife came thundering down to sever her hand at the wrist. She managed to evade the blow, but only barely. The scratches on Dimdweller’s face started to heal even as he was hurled back, vivid green light bursting out of his injuries as a nearby druid took on their task.
In the meantime Irimar had already struck her, two spellbound knives buried into either side of her neck – she twisted away from Zakimel towards Timesnatcher, and now he took Dimdweller’s place, a hand on the handle of the whip beside her own.
His free hand suddenly held another dagger, and before Zakimel even seemed to recover from his first swing Irimar was beginning his third, sawing at the bony arm clutching the whip.
It was then, as we all recovered and pressed the attack once more, that she abandoned the carcass she wore.
A shower of bones fell to the ground, but clearly Sunspring didn’t think it was unsalvageable; the gorilla gave up his attempts to join the combat directly and lunged out, catching the remains of Eneleyn Arithos in his massive hands. His motion brought him towards me and Ciraya, and as he entered the shield’s safety he shrank down, a nimbus of emerald mist immediately enveloping the skeleton he laid out on the carpet. My death-sense didn’t seem to register it as a corpse, which was intriguing.
As I moved my eyes back up to the eolastyr, I saw that the tigress had almost landed amidst the scorched debris, but Timesnatcher no longer had hold of her whip – a circle of crimson shielding had surrounded her, driving him away.
Drop it, no…
Em’s sword danced down from the sky, its edges incapable of cutting through the scarlet bubble about the demon, producing nothing but smoke; other energy-rays descended, to even less effect. A few arch-diviners made moves that were repulsed.
I saw as Killstop entered early, perhaps in an attempt to wrangle some greater dominance of the scene with her power – Tanra struck the red shield, unleashing a devastating torrent of blows, hundreds of strikes achieving barely as much of a disturbance as Em’s vast weapon.
At the same moment, a number of others imbued with sorcerous senses started reporting what they could see for the benefit of those who hadn’t yet intuited what had happened.
Damn shields!
“Netherhame!” I cried. “It’s time. Kani!”
Lyanne was only slightly slower than I’d been. As Netherhame came up through the floor not five feet from me, the eolastyr had landed softly in the charred remnants of the chamber – and she was speaking.
I had forgotten just how abhorrent the pearly, triangular face was – and the mocking breeziness of her flawless voice, emanating from between the dusky lips. Emanating from Infernum.
“Five of you I recognise, and I must apologise…”
I glanced up – I could see Em amongst the wizards up there, now that their energy-beams had halted. Glimmermere was perched on the balcony beyond the shattered back wall, her condor-shape not quite full-grown.
Even Everseer didn’t know Killstop would be number five…
“How is it that the Daughter of the Sinphalamax spoke awry?” the eolastyr went on, cocking her weird-shaped head in an unusual sign of puzzlement. “I acknowledge your strength, champions of Mund. Not in all the realms of men have I seen such valour – and I am old beyond your ken. Yet you come here expecting to catch me unawares.”
I looked back at the doorway, the whole thing shattered at some point by a stray spell launched by an ally, deflected or manipulated by the tigress.
Where’s Kani?
“In truth, I knew not that this sorry space should be our battleground – yet I knew that I wouldn’t get to choose this time. It was your turn, and you chose. You chose, and you failed.”
I didn’t even need to ask her – Netherhame caught my eye from the far side of the room and then together, as we’d practised on the way over, we joined our forces, each of us pinning the eolastyr’s shield at one side.
“How long?” I screamed at Kani over the link.
“Your failure is all my success.”
The tigress raised her whip once more –
The cleric answered my question with her sudden appearance, blurring like an arch-diviner into the room through the broken doorway behind me.
If you drew a line between me and Netherhame, Kani would’ve halted right in the centre; her blessed mace was raised, her solemn expression fixed.
“Wythyldwyn says goodbye,” she said disdainfully, swinging her mace at the floor.
The resulting orb of yellow light exploded into amber, pouring across the floor, enveloping the eolastyr. It felt like fast-moving steam, a sun-warmed breeze, and within a second it had passed over us all, leaving all Kani’s friends and their eldritches untouched.
Leaving the eolastyr’s shield in tatters.
Where before it had been a shimmering curtain of crimson velvet, now it was a frayed pink blanket, thin enough to get a tan through in winter.
But it didn’t matter. The whip fell, the crack locking all of us into three or four moments of stupor.
She was right. We failed.
She used the time to ignite dozens of crimson portals, letting them spring up from every unshielded surface – between feet, on the wall enveloping someone’s head –
“You fools left them with Shallowlie,” the tigress said, before punching the ground at her feet in one deafening, oil-slick motion.
Stones erupted, spraying out in chunks and chips from the collision of her bestial paw with the floor; and the eolastyr moved to the floor below us as we gathered our wits, regathered our faculties…
The moment Kani came back to her senses she muttered something and disappeared in a flash once more – this time the cleric left a trail of amber light behind her, which from what I’d heard wasn’t supposed to happen when she activated her ring.
“The fiend’s going for the twins!” Killstop said.
“Stay on top of her!” Timesnatcher boomed.
While the diviners and wizards poured through into the chamber beneath, following her into the chasm she’d created, we hung back. Valorin and Ciraya watched on as me and Netherhame stepped up. Between us, we choked the red portals, siphoning off their power-sources to feed our own. It was simple – the eolastyr didn’t have the gates properly established. She didn’t have her throne room; she hadn’t had time to scry us out, develop a plan. She just had this – another last-minute diversion.
When we made our way down after them, seconds later, we emerged through the crevasse into a room filled with metal canisters, boxes, cages… And they had already taken the fight into the next arena of conflict: outside.
There was a solid thousand feet of (not-so-solid) open air ready to greet me as I plunged through the shredded tower-wall with the others. Even with the wraith-form’s benefits, it was enough to flip my stomach, especially as we were plunging straight downwards in a steep dive. The eolastyr had gone through first; my vampiric eyes could pick her out through the crowd, her distinctive patterned fur and gleaming white head, her long black hair streaming behind her, above her. The fractured red shield had been abandoned – instead she used her superb intuition to writhe out of the way of the attacks we launched down at her. Em and Mountainslide were just two of the various arch-wizards throwing spells, and me and Netherhame were flinging out spears of force with all our might – all to no avail. A crack rang out, and I saw the diviners who’d outpaced her fluttering off, stranded in the air suddenly.
“I’ve deferred the evacuation orders,” Zakimel growled. “The Constellation and Refined Timing are standing by. Archmages, anticipate a change of killing-ground.”
I estimated seven or eight seconds before the eolastyr’s clawed feet struck the roofs of the lesser towers clustered about the main spire. Five or six seconds before she’d essentially be loose in Mund, if Zakimel was right. She wasn’t falling lethargically this time – she fell like a thing of Materium, dropping like a stone – and just as we reached her, using our top speeds, another crack went out.
I was slowed for a little less time than before, and felt a little less stupefied. I noticed the magisters in the streets below, thick knots of mage-robes bearing the Magisterium symbol charging into Gilderow Avenue.
“It’s working!” Killstop cried. “Keep pushing her!”
Even as I recovered and renewed my descent, vampire senses let me pinpoint the source of the effect: I homed in on the gobbets of human meat dangling from the thongs of the whip. Only half of what had been there when we first assaulted her now remained.
I yelled: “The whip! We’re using up the flesh on it!”
“Exactly, genius!” Tanra muttered.
It was only as the eolastyr skipped off the edge of a roof and continued to plummet towards the street that I realised.
“We’re wrong – where’s Shallowlie?” I hissed, looking back up at the tops of the towers we’d left behind.
No massive ring of hyper-protective shielding surrounding the spires.
No twins.
“Shallowlie?” Netherhame seemed to shoot up into the sky – it was only that she was slowing to a stop as I sank past her at horrendous speeds. “Shallowlie, answer!”
“Kani?” Spirit was asking.
I craned my head up to watch as Netherhame barrelled back towards the spire in which we’d waited out the start of the fight – the place that should’ve been the centre of a huge sorcerous sphere.
I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted. I looked down, adjusting my trajectory.
A host of archmages hurtling in her wake, the demon struck the fine basalt paving outside the Tower of the Seven-Star Swords, landing crouched like a cat.
Despite the fact that the impact buckled the street, leaving her in a crater and sending a shockwave of slushy snow and splintered rock rippling through her surroundings, she appeared uninjured, unslowed. She took off, leaping for a group of magisters in front of her who’d been charging up a wide stairway towards the tower’s plaza.
The five mages had screeched to a stop, and then simultaneously, as if compelled by a telepathic order or even just base survival instinct, they were suddenly shifting in posture, getting ready to backpedal down the steps –
No one had gotten ahead of her – Killstop and Timesnatcher were almost on her heels, but her powers interacted strangely with theirs; they couldn’t defend her targets as she sprang at the group of them.
The whip swept out in an arc, not cracking but used like a flail to bat at the brave, recoiling men and women.
She didn’t even hit all of them, but it didn’t matter. One mage was three yards from the swinging barbs of the whip, but the effect devoured him along with the others. Their robes were shredded, loops of fabric sinking to the floor, suddenly enclosing skeletons. The magisters’ remains dropped where they stood, tumbling to the ground and down the stairs as their flesh was reft away in a single awful instant.
Worst of all, I could tell they were still alive – dying from shock, yes, but still alive. It was predominantly the outer layers of skin and fat that she stole, leaving some of the musculature and all the internal organs intact.
A distraction for our druids, whose green light was already starting to stream from beneath the magisters’ coils of clothing.
We were already past her victims, sweeping out into the avenue itself.
In an effort to hide the crowds from her view and keep them from making attractive targets on the surrounding roads, the people had been diverted not away from the area but into the buildings themselves. The avenue was nearly empty of foot-traffic.
The speed, the sheer illogical slipperiness of our arch-diviners was our greatest asset – and our weakness. The moment Tanra got a hand on the eolastyr’s whip she brought it down, cracking again.
The tigress turned to face us, and this time it was as bad as the first had been… worse. I swooned, paralysed, looking on blankly as she swung the whip now at Killstop.
I couldn’t watch but I couldn’t help myself – the seeress fell apart, her multicoloured cloths helping to disguise the gore as she tumbled, stripped of every parcel of flesh. Her gaunt, staring skull was horrible to behold.
She wasn’t the only one. The eolastyr took advantage of the extended reprieve, springing towards Timesnatcher and Dimdweller –
Starsight and Doomspeaker came streaking in from outside the sphere of her whip’s influence, clutching again desperately for her weapon before she could let it fall –
Too late. Timesnatcher and Dimdweller were consumed.
She spun as the other two diviners reached her, striking them with elbow and knee, smashing Star’s ribcage and braining Doomspeaker.
They went hurtling to the ground, and I saw as Glimmermere landed in the road beyond the demon, the condor’s intense gaze falling on the dying champions.
As I shook myself back into action, throwing out force-blades, she erected her shimmering red shield once more. Perhaps it wasn’t quite as solid-looking as when she’d first raised it – perhaps…
“Ah, but you are a formidable one, are you not?” She reached through the dome of scarlet energy and sank her claws into the mess of fabric and pain that had been Timesnatcher, pulling his fleshless body across the boundary. “We can spare a moment, for the likes of you.”
Vampire-hearing could make out the strangled sounds coming from his ruined throat.
She held the clawed hand out over his body, light coalescing in her furred palm, and I couldn’t.
I couldn’t see this.
Couldn’t watch it happen again.
The disintegration. There would be no coming back. And for all that I hated him, I needed him. He was a part of Mund, a part of me.
He would not die.
Dozens of attacks landed on the crimson shields. Copperbrow and Stormsword worked together, pouring lightning on the infernal barrier as though it were water they were showering her with. Valorin’s demons included a bintaborax, and they pressed futilely against the bloody, shimmering circle. Even insect-swarms and plant-roots were being called upon, every last iota of power being brought into play.
I summoned Gilaela, a flood of crackling emerald energy flowing forth in front of me as I stepped up.
I heard the bitter neigh of hatred that escaped her lips when she saw our foe, and as I strode through her and joined with her, a motion augmented with a flap of my wings, I left the unicorn awake within me.
Her animosity suffused me, replacing uncertainty with indifference as I lowered my head, charging with my incandescent horn thrust out.
“Strike it down!” she screamed in my head.
Grinning, I clove through the eolastyr’s shield at almost full speed, head-first.
It broke like a dome of red glass, not wavering and evaporating but shattering, shards of pure infernal force seeming to wail as they gave way, layer after layer –
Yet another crack split the air, and everything stilled, everyone froze –
I was halted, coming to a jolting stop, all my irresistible forwards momentum killed in an instant.
It wasn’t just the sonic weapon stopping me. I flicked my eyes up, and she was there. The eolastyr, right in front of me, her arm extended up to hold me by the horn. My aim had been true, and she’d been forced to relinquish the spell she was casting on Irimar.
For the first time, I saw actual pain twist her already-twisted features; I could hear a faint crackling sound emanating from somewhere just over my head, as if it seared her flesh to grip the ethereal horn.
I floated there almost horizontally, paralysed in place. The way she held me, I was hovering over the sickening body of Timesnatcher on the ground below me, helplessly staring into my captor’s vacant eyes.
“A powerful eldritch, to be sure,” she said, grimacing.
She drew her arm back and I screamed, my mind splitting in half.
Gilaela was pulled out of me in her entirety, skittering on faltering hooves, shining eyes wild with fright. I floated in empty time-space, an untethered observer, tears obscuring my vision.
The eolastyr was tall enough at full extension to hoist the unicorn up by the horn, bringing Gilaela’s flailing legs into the air. I could see the smoking connection of furred paw with glittering bone. The sizzling sounded worse, now that the horn was substantial.
“Powerful, but not infinitely so,” the tigress murmured, twisting.
The horn didn’t come free, but under the grinding strength of the eolastyr’s hand it split and splintered, two branches peeling away from the core of the strange material. The golden light fractured into shadow and died.
Gilaela didn’t scream, but when I heard her shuddering gasp something inside me changed.
“This shall bring you closer to your goal, my child.”
Between one moment and the next, Gilaela’s pearly-white fur became inky-black. Out of the centre of each of her hooves, a single long, black talon protruded –
The unicorn’s wide, wild eyes rolled back in exultation, pure ecstasy –
Then, as the shockwave of the whip’s last reverberations faded, the eolastyr somehow hefted her by the broken, asymmetrical trident-horn. She hefted the dark unicorn, and shoved her back inside me.
“So much potential!” the demon said in a laughing voice. “Oh, my child. I cannot believe she failed to bring you to fruition.”
I screamed again.
The contact was excruciating; strange; alien; and as effortless as always. Rejoining told me certain things instantly. Gilaela was still fey – she hadn’t been transformed somehow into a demon. I could still feel her rage, her desire to smash the demon before which we floated. And she was, as far as I was able to tell, still mine – there wasn’t any of that slightly off sensation I now associated with Zel. Yet…
She was different.
Part of the horn extending from my brow was visible to me now. It was nightshade-blue, tiny black sparks of unlight trickling from the triplicate points. What was more, my index finger on each hand had been transfigured into a black dagger, as thin and long as a dirk.
Sharp as a dirk.
Wizards were lashing out, trying to drive her away from me and Timesnatcher – druids were working their healing – the eolastyr spun in place, and I looked into her black eyes. Looked into them, knowing I was outmatched, outclassed in every conceivable way. We all were.
I didn’t stop, of course, swinging my new talons at her unbearably-smug face. They passed harmlessly through her weird white skin and she even nodded slowly to me in acknowledgement afterwards, as though she were aware of my resignation, my sudden change of heart.
We lost the twins. We lost the element of surprise.
We lost.
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