JET 8.2: REVENGE
“Death is your certainty. Death is your ending. Will you go to an ending you did not choose? When will you heed death’s overtures? Only when you are too sick, too weak to do otherwise? No. It is the weak who fear death. The strong? The strong welcome it. Many are those who claim to be strong, and yet they will shirk their fate, balk at doom, blench and cringe and judder.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Swordfaith Lectures’ recordings, Urdara 966 NE
Dreams and nightmares. There was no distinction. Half the time Jaid and Jaroan held me close when I returned to them, and half the time they turned away from me, silently begging me to go, leave them, cease inflicting myself upon them… But sometimes there was joy to be found when they spurned me, and sorrow when they accepted me back. Somehow I hoped they were gone, already far beyond the curse of my influence…
That didn’t stop me needing to see them. Should they have departed Mund, I’d find them – if only to ensure they were safe.
We worked with the stones in shifts, some as short as ten minutes. Everyone was weak, but it didn’t matter: together, we were strong. With the help of Herreld and his kinsmen we broke away our first big piece of rock before my next sleep cycle, and almost everyone joined in the tired cheer. It couldn’t have taken more than twelve hours – that was how I chose to phrase it when I congratulated everyone. Plus, despite being busy, two of the dwarves had been working on chisel-type implements of harder stone in their spare moments.
It had taken off. It wasn’t just my project now. Everyone wanted in. Soon I’d propose splitting our food evenly, assuming people were going to help, of course. Those who wouldn’t chip in could make do with a little less to eat, couldn’t they? And the rest of us would all be well-fed, more capable of labour.
I didn’t feel sorry for the highborn in here, who seemed to mostly comprise the loners still sitting on the outskirts, incapable of extending themselves in fellowship with the uncouth. If they were content to sit there aloof and wait for death, what would it matter if we took from their shares?
In high spirits I left the ‘toilet’ and went to ‘bed’, lying there, scratching my ‘beard’ and daydreaming before sleep claimed me.
Whether I was awake or not, the dream was the same.
Getting free. Getting the twins. Leaving everything and everyone I’d ever known behind. Even Xantaire and Xastur and Orstrum – while I missed them and always would, they weren’t even in the same league. It wasn’t my job to protect them, ultimately. But the twins… I had to act. I had to keep going, until I was reunited with them or I died, one or the other. I couldn’t abandon them to this world, not yet. If they were a few years older everything might’ve been different… I might’ve been less-willing to organise Mund’s greatest-ever break-out of criminals, but here we were, doing what we had to do.
To be free.
However, my lovely dream changed halfway through, nightmare tendrils reaching out, reminding me of the real consequences of Vardae’s speech – the tendrils stole Jaid from me, stole Jaroan – now when I escaped Zyger they were already gone, had already fled the city – I didn’t know which way they’d headed, and I scoured the countryside, but every time I thought I’d found them it turned out to be someone else, someone with a clue as to their whereabouts – I seemed to spend days, weeks, years obeying these dream-people and their recommendations, flying here and there on tired wings, growing increasingly desperate –
A hand, roughly shaking me by the shoulder.
“Kas!” Rath’s low hiss.
I gratefully pulled my awareness out of the nightmare, but when I opened my eyes and followed his, I almost wished I’d stayed asleep.
A full-on ghost was floating down out of the shaft, flickering in the Inceryad’s fiery glow. She looked like the ghost of a magister, her hair tied back severely, her almost-transparent body swathed in a formal robe, its folds like smoke rolling in waves about her as she descended. Any official Magisterium symbol on her shadow-clothes was indiscernible, however.
“Thou shalt desist,” she said, floating straight over towards the ‘toilet’ and the crew of darkmages dutifully clanging their hard, hand-held stones against the fault-lines in the wall.
“Oh, we shalt, shall we?” one of the lowborn darkmages sneered back at the ghost, his accent mocking hers. He was a young man and he stood straight, pausing his stone-on-stone hammering to regard her. “Why, what’re they gonna do with us? Throw us in Magicrux Zyger? Pop on back to your masters, and tell them from me that they –”
The ghost seemed to utilise a short-ranged teleport, simply vanishing and then reappearing directly behind the man.
“Thou shalt desist,” she said again; the darkmage did his best to whirl, shrieking something, but she put her arms around him, through him, and he dropped his stone.
Then he dropped his corpse, the body sliding down lifelessly to the rocks, slipping over the wet boulders and landing in the ‘toilet’ with a splash. She was holding something shapeless now in her embrace, an entity of shadow and light. The darkmage’s soul, being exposed to the corrupting influence of nethernal energies.
It screamed. The soul, it was screaming. We couldn’t hear the sound, but that just made it more horrible. We could see the amorphous mouth, locked in perpetual motion, a noiseless trill of utter desolation.
The final phrase was spoken slowly but with no delicacy, her voice a hollow monotone.
“Thou… shalt… desist.”
Then the ghost was gone, and the darkmage’s with her, leaving only her echoes behind.
As the sounds faded and everyone could see she wasn’t immediately coming back, dozens of voices exploded.
“What was that?”
“So we can’t even hit rocks without being punished further.”
“Gods-damned magisters…”
“What did he say to it?”
It’s over, I said to myself grimly, keeping my disappointment sealed up inside. Just like that, the dream dies.
I was feeling very bitter all of a sudden, so it took me a minute to realise the ghost had been speaking Netheric, and apparently only a portion of us had understood the meaning of her words and the archmage’s reply. I’d given away the fact I was an ex-sorcerer before I’d wrapped my head around it, but it was ever-so-slightly reassuring to recognise I hadn’t entirely lost my gift. It was just… being suppressed. It was a silver lining on the blackest of black clouds, but it was something. I couldn’t speak it, though, not without the appropriate creature in front of me. I grabbed another arch-sorcerer, and together we tested it – the language was something we could only understand now. Neither of us could get our tongues to break the planar boundary at will.
The ghost’s a strange choice of eldritch guardian, I mused, moving away from the other ex-sorcerer and trying to puzzle it out.
Wasn’t it odd? An eldritch whose warnings few archmages could even comprehend… not like they cared much whether the warnings were heeded, though, I guessed. This was probably a cost-cutting exercise, using the type of ghost that’d mindlessly haunt the same spot for centuries…
Then it struck me. The thing I’d been missing.
“It’s just like them, isn’t it?” I growled.
I was mostly speaking to myself, but a bunch of nearby darkmages turned to listen.
“The Magisterium?” someone asked in an old, croaky voice. “Of course, young man. They would’ve never allowed it. I did try telling you all…”
“It’s not that.” My eyes sought out Herreld’s in the crowd, found him crouching, dejected, on a shelf of rock lining the wall. “They’ve abused the unscryable nature of the place. Diviners are taught that people condemned to Zyger are irretrievable, and it makes sense to them – but a five-man-band of dropping watchmen could accomplish it with ease… Give them a rope-ladder, and a sword each, and what could we do, really? And now… now this…”
I looked up at the circular disc of space in the cavern roof, the hole hanging over the centre of the pool, and felt the disgust creep over my features, the mask of hatred that had always been beneath the surface finally manifesting.
All the things I’d been angry about had been superseded, dwarfed into insignificance as time supplied context, unveiling the sheer incomprehensible depth of their callousness. It wasn’t overprotectiveness, or even greed – it was Evil in its heart. The kind of Evil only a collective consciousness could come up with, a guild that screened applicants not by merit but by their lack of conscience…
Once, I’d been angry that the magisters supported the system that made the poor poorer and the rich richer – now I knew that all along they’d known of Mund’s impending destruction and said nothing. Where was the justice, and what form could such a thing take?
Once, I’d been angry that one of their leaders kept my girlfriend from my side when I entered a city filled with undead – now I knew that this leader had twisted her mind, manipulating both of us, and said nothing for months. Where were the fines, the criminal investigations?
Once, I’d been angry that another of their leaders tried to get me and my friends killed in that same undead city – now I knew that Zakimel was just the scum on the surface, merely preserving the Magisterium’s far-darker secrets. Where was the truth? Where was the punishment?
“And now!” I repeated. “Now they show us how easy it would be! To send down a winged eldritch – they’re clearly not affected by the tree – just send one down, like, ‘Hey, Neverwish, you’re coming with me!’ and that’d be the end of it but oh no, that’d mess with all the carefully-arranged preconceptions, all the lies they’ve built up. Gods! Damn you! Damn you all!”
I moved aside and threw myself down on my knees. Ignoring the mutterings of the crowd in the wake of my rant, I started to cry. The twins’ faces swam in front of my eyes even when I screwed them shut, refusing to evaporate no matter how tightly I closed them, how far into the darkness I plunged.
I’ll sink, then, I said to myself. I’ll go into the water, and search for the way out down there. If I drown… better to drown than – what? Live here? Eking out an existence on the edge of oblivion?
No. I’ll move on, die the way I always knew I would – trying to get back.
Get back to them…
Do it, Kas. You can do it.
I drew in a breath, put my palms on the stone to either side of me, preparing to open my eyes and push myself up to my feet –
My ears caught the sounds.
“So you – you’re Neverwish.”
I stayed where I was, waiting. Herreld didn’t reply before –
“And that means ‘e is Feychilde. Told ya! So oo’re you, man? Timesnatcher?”
They was a flurry of sound – a crack, a number of swiftly-delivered blows…
I sighed-out my freshly-drawn breath.
Rathal… don’t take them all to pieces, please…
After a few seconds of listening to the animal grunts coming from his victims I found myself frowning, getting to my feet to stop him –
And when I looked I froze, open-mouthed in dismay.
Rath wasn’t winning. He was pinned, three of them holding him, and another ex-seer was pummelling him like a trained gladiator, socking him in the eyes, the throat, below the breastbone… The grunting was his. Somehow, he was still standing, still conscious, but he was leaning back against the ones who’d trapped his arms and waist, his head lolling to one side. He was almost spent.
“Sick… of… you…” the ex-seer started murmuring as he struck, struck, struck.
And Neverwish was already gone, lying face-down in the water, a black gash in the rear of his skull.
Ripplewhim was backing away from the others, stringy figures sliding over the rocks in the firelight, streaming towards him.
Towards me.
There was nowhere to run. Retreat was pointless. They were almost on us anyway.
Pain. I’d endured it before. I’d just have to do it again. Move into the beyond without cringing. Stride into the shadowland with self-knowledge.
I deserved my dues, after all.
I killed us. I killed us all. For all that I hated you, Emrelet, I joined you before the end.
A murderer. A darkmage worthy of the title.
I glanced over at the Inceryad-tree in the last few seconds before they reached me. The flames reflected in the narrow, twisted branches, in the wispy mirrors of the broken trunk – the crystalline abomination seemed to be laughing at me, fire and shadow dancing in its million smiles.
But I wasn’t one for just submitting, not like this. The champions and magisters had broken my will, but Rathal had restored me. I would fight, until my last breath. I was young, spry, well-conditioned by months of practice and battle. Sure, I was missing most of my tools, but I had to try.
I jabbed at the nearest one, almost open-handed, ready to clench my fist as the blow landed, but he was moving too quickly. The strike hit home but it didn’t matter; I didn’t get chance to follow it up as he slammed into me, knocking me down on my back and sprawling atop me.
Luckily, perhaps, I instinctively managed to keep my head tucked forward, keep my skull from splitting apart as my spine started screaming from the rough contact.
Then a fist hit the end of my nose. Then a foot hit my bottom row of teeth. Then something heavier than either struck the outside of my elbow.
My arm now felt awfully wrong and it was the adrenaline, adrenaline keeping me existing through the moments, only bit by bit becoming aware of the terrible damage being wrought on my body. I’d seen it done, agonies being inflicted – I’d seen even Tanra ripping the hands off her enemies to slow their spell-casting – and I’d done it myself – I’d wounded creatures before, hurt them like I was now being hurt. I’d been the one on the receiving end too. I’d been partially opened-up by the first vampire-lord I met, and fully opened-up by the liches of Zadhal. I’d had my left leg pulped by the weight of a fallen ikistadreng and I’d fallen from the sky.
But then I was a champion. There was always the possibility of magical healing, and I’d always thought that when the end came, it would be something glorious, even perhaps something worthy of song.
It wasn’t, and within seconds, despite all my vows to stand firm, I was already longing for that chance to submit, to give in, avoid this beating. I couldn’t breathe through my smashed nose. Snot and blood filled my throat and the pressure of a variety of wounds was bubbling to the surface, making the lid of the pot rattle and dance, my arms and legs contorting in a desperate attempt to protect what remained of me from the rain of blows, bring up a knee in the way of a savage kick, bring up an elbow in the way of a –
Using the elbow in defence was a mistake. It sang its own song through my lips, a squeal of such intensity that I heard it reverberating across the chamber, reverberating through my skull – my misshapen, almost hanging-off ear –
Something hard landed on my foot, squashing my toes, trapping me. I felt the bone in the ball of my foot crunching into a paste, but I could no longer scream, couldn’t breathe at all – they were hitting me, kicking me, and my eyelids started to flutter in anticipation of unconsciousness –
“Stop,” snarled a soft voice.
I managed to focus on him – the ex-seer who’d been knocking Rath around, looming over me, throwing the others back with expertly-placed thrusts of his arms.
A saviour? I wondered, mind blank. But who?
Now that the pressure was off slightly I managed to roll onto my side, and I coughed out the contents of my throat all over the stones.
“Stop,” he repeated. “Feychilde is mine.”
* * *
He swam in and out of focus, and I did my best to grin at him, half-toothless, gums open and raw.
“Amd whab? Whab dim I do to you?”
He shrieked laughter. The darkmage had to be in his thirties; he had a squashed face, all his features clustered in the centre, making him look like he’d grown up with his head trapped inside a fishbowl. His hair was brown and shaggy, scraggly beard jumping around as he snapped the answer:
“What did you do to me? You destroyed my best friend! Melted him right down… Gods be praised you’re here, now. I’m gonna take my sweet time killing you, boy.”
“Destoy whoob?” I complained.
Why did these darkmages keep insisting I’d killed people they knew?
“Bladebuilder!” he hissed, coming close to loom over me. “Phraidon, Phraidon Garalaz, burned to a crisp. I saw it – it was the last thing I saw before that damned Killstop got in my way… You were fighting him. I saw enough to know what happened, Feychilde.”
I realised then who he meant. ‘Bladebuilder’, the sorcerer annihilated in Saff and Tarr’s awakening. Which made this guy the diviner the one who’d been wearing the clock-styled mask.
I looked up at him through blurry eyes.
“Cock-face.”
The kick he unleashed couldn’t been seen, not even felt – only in the wake of its passage did the strobing mind intuit the blow, sensing the pain at a great distance, the change in angle through my spinning eyes where my neck had been twisted, turning my head to face the other direction.
I closed my eyes, cutting off the nauseating spinning only to find that the darkness didn’t help – I was on my hands and knees, falling through the night, my gorge rising –
“Clockwatcher, thank you very much. I realise you want me to put you out of your misery, but none of the wounds you’ve yet sustained are likely to off you, and I’d like to take the opportunity to torture you, if I may.”
I knew he was looking around at the others by their silence, save for one who dared speak up: Shadowcrafter.
“You’re going to torture the boy? Slay him? Leave one or the other for me – it was his hand that sent me tumbling hither! Can any other here boast the same? Does any other’s need for vengeance burn as mine?”
“He captured you?”
“He cheated,” came the spiteful answer. “Now, at last, I get to gloat over his body, as he surely did over mine.”
A foot landed in my chest, then rolled me fully-over onto my back.
“Well, boy?”
I looked up at the bald head, the big nose.
“Shabow… cramter.”
“Yes. Yes. Good.” The smile glinted over me like an executioner’s blade. “I am your biggest fan, Feychilde.”
“Find out what makes him tick,” Clockwatcher purred.
“Oh, indeed.” I saw the shapes moving as Shadowcrafter bent to find an appropriate rock. “I like to start with the groin.”
I mumbled, thrashed against the incredible pressure pinning my foot, and felt the weight of another boot on my shoulder – someone took my arm and bent it against the wounded elbow, stopping my struggling, leaving me howling –
“Wha’ the Hells is tha’?” someone muttered.
“What?”
“That, there.”
“Oh gods.”
“I know what that is!”
I leaned my head to one side, trying to follow the eyeline of Clockwatcher and Shadowcrafter.
From the angle I was at, I could actually see it coming – I was on my back, and I could see the edge of the shaft leading back up towards Mund, the circular opening that had spat each and every one us into this waiting room of hell. It moved out from the hole, a shadow amongst shadows. A six-legged hunter in the night.
A pair of red eyes in the darkness, slipping closer across the dripping, pitted ceiling.
Once I realised what was happening, I would come to recognise that I’d been expecting it all along.
This was my time of punishment, and they were the first I’d offended. The first who’d seen fit to place a bounty on the head of Feychilde.
The first ones in line to collect on my life.
Termiax and Rissala.
“’S comin’ closer!” someone wailed.
“I know what that is – back off!”
I heard Shadowcrafter’s bark of frustration, Clockwatcher’s snarl. I saw them stalking away from me nonetheless.
Everyone could sense it.
I was its victim. This was my time of reckoning. All my overconfidence. All my power. Stripped away, to the bone. No special circumstance to save me. No god or goddess looking on at these events from on high. Just the deities below, their bellies rumbling with the promise of death to come.
The darkmages gathered on the stones about me, murmuring, all keeping a safe distance of twenty yards or more. Now that they’d parted and spread out, I could see Duskdown – Rath was still alive, his chest rising and falling, but his face was a mess of broken skin. He wasn’t so far from me. Ripplewhim was motionless on the ground between us, face down in a patch of jagged-edged rocks.
Temcar looked to be dead, but I couldn’t be certain. On the other hand there was Neverwish – Herreld… The poor dwarf was still face-down in the water. He wasn’t getting up again.
The mizelikon dropped down from the ceiling, and even where it should’ve been visible it simply swallowed the firelight, its smoky body refusing illumination like leather refused to soak up water. Its six strange, feline legs were visible as silhouettes, spindly appendages distending and stretching, allowing it to almost step from ceiling to floor in spite of the sixty, maybe seventy-foot gap.
Of course it had come for me now. Eldritch powers weren’t affected by the Inceryad like human divination was… They’d only be limited by their own ability, and thrown off by other eldritches. The leaders of the Cannibal Six had summoned this mizelikon to kill me right back at the end of Orovost, and it had looked ahead at my future, pulled along by the confluence, the machinations of the four all-powerful arch-diviners who’d had a hand in my destiny…
Following me here. Not only to the time and place I’d be powerless, but waiting, waiting until Rath was incapacitated, waiting until I was wounded beyond any ability to resist, to fight back…
It was smart. Smarter than I’d given it credit, for all my useless knowledge, all my previous strength.
Unconsciousness tempted me. But when I closed my eyes, biting my lip against the agonies wracking me, I was no longer dizzy.
The twins. They were there. Always there.
I would fight.
But how?
They said that your life flashed before your eyes before you died. Now that fateful day slipped through my mind, sand in an hourglass, memories flooding through the aperture of my consciousness.
Belexor’s pocket.
“Belly killed the new sh-shampion,” Meneda giggles.
Urinating involuntarily when my rat-self encountered the scents of the tavern’s hidden spaces.
“This is our moment of revenge,” Screamsong – Lady Rissala – snarls.
Fleeing the mizelikon up the street.
Nighteye… poor, poor Nighteye…
And –
The almost ascetic look of him, the unkempt hair and gaunt features.
The voice. Solemn. Serious. Implacable.
”You must grip the brand tightly. Do you hear me?”
I spent an instant tossing and turning inside my own head, internal mechanisms stuttering.
Timesnatcher… did he…? Even then… he saw this?
Saw – no.
Heard… He heard this…
Grip… the brand?
I opened my eyes again as the murmurs died down, and found that the demon was close by, only one more bonfire between us. It had transformed on the edge of the firelight into a many-armed creature, coiled darkness personified: its two red eyes had now split into four, one pair atop the other, and it resembled a spider more than the feline form it had used till now.
It took the shape that best allowed it to assassinate its prey. It couldn’t sneak up on me – it had to stop my would-be killers from finishing the job. Its job. It had to intimidate them, or it wouldn’t get its chance; I’d already be dead.
A paradox that might work in my favour.
But it knew I was damaged. Mizelikon weren’t afforded a heavy presence in Materium; they moved quickly and lightly, but they weren’t very durable, and their attacks were similarly impaired. This disguise would balance that weakness, give it physical weight in exchange for some of its speed.
I could definitely use that to my advantage.
I sat up, and used my hands to move the big brick of stone that’d mashed my foot. Then, grimacing, I shifted my body across the rocks, the muscles that worked hauling on the ones that didn’t. I flopped like a fish, crawling and sliding across sharp teeth, little jagged crenellations that slashed at my skin, opening it in dozens of places as I headed for the nearest fire.
I found that pain no longer mattered. It was only one more fact, one more piece of sensory information being fed to my brain. It could be safely ignored, background noise. It could matter later, if there was a later. Agony was the path I’d chosen, right back with the Bone Ring and my first foray into this dangerous world. I’d walk the path. I’d come too far to turn back now.
The fire was almost directly between me and the dark shape. As I moved forwards it circled around me, staying out of the well-lit sphere – the darkmages all hurried to give us an ever-wider berth. I tried to keep the demon in my sights, but the fact it was placing itself behind me wasn’t exactly ideal –
And then when I was still six feet from the flames it lunged out into the illumination, a glossy black squid, going for my legs with a whole host of tendril-like coils. I saw its glistening, inky central body, its mushroom-shaped head, four crimson eyes fixed on me.
Then it had me, held me, finding and squeezing the pulped foot as though that could stop me.
The appendage was already basically nerveless. I screamed laughter, another involuntary reaction, even as I twisted myself free and resumed my slide towards the light-source – but it was no good. The other tendrils were fastening onto me with all the purchase their shadowy substance permitted them, latching onto my calves, knees, thighs –
Three feet away. My outstretched arm covered most of that distance. The nearest brand, inches from my questing fingertips.
It pulled me back, and the jolt caused my face to connect with the ground – impacting on another sharp bit of stone, tearing a strip of skin off my forehead.
I couldn’t rise up properly, not without my busted elbow grinding my mind into unconsciousness, so I rolled over again, kicking out savagely, hoping to disrupt the demon’s grip… a futile gesture. The last gasp of my stubborn willpower, desperately lashing out in the hopes of making a change, something, anything that would stop me from being pulled in towards its central mass…
It pulled.
I did the only thing left.
“Buskbown!” I squealed.
Whatever it was in him that empowered him, it cut through time and space and the voids between the stars. He was too far from me to help but I saw him struggling to open his puffy eyes – trying to rise.
“Kas,” he choked, hands twitching, contorting.
Clockwatcher, not far from him, turned his way with a look of mingled fear and awe – Duskdown himself! – and aimed a lethal kick at his head –
Then Clockwatcher was lying next to him, dying, brained on the stones, and Rath was rising, already moving –
The mizelikon dragged me out of the firelight and into the shadow, taking on new aspects, limbs that were previously legs now changing, stiffening and narrowing, becoming blade-like tongues. Black thorns sprouted from every inch of their surfaces, piercing my skin –
Just as my friend threw a burning stick at the demon, the fiery end wheeling around to crack into one of its tendrils.
It recoiled, loosening its grip for an instant, and I put everything into reversing my motion, squeezing free, but I was snagged on its barbs in a dozen places.
Gnashing my teeth, I tracked the stick Rath had thrown and grabbed for it. The brand tumbled to the rocky ground next to me, and, not caring where and how I gripped it, knowing only that I had to do so tightly – I lifted it.
Drawing a mighty breath, I swung back the flaming end and hammered at the fiend with it.
Instantly I could see that the stick was taking more of a beating than the demon. I heard the blackened tip crack, charred pieces crumbling away.
The mizelikon’s spikes lacerated my lower legs – dark incisions, tendons tearing –
Three times, I pummelled its head with the brand – it snatched for it, then, and I did as I’d been told, all that time ago: I held on, held on for dear life –
I lasted less than three seconds. It might’ve been half-shadow, but it was an experienced assassin, an immortal creature of Mekesta. It knew what it was doing.
It tore the stick from my hand, leaving my elbow singing madly from the whiplash –
Now it lacerated my upper legs – blood flowing, rivers of it, off to join the Inceryad’s laughing streams, and I slid in it, ever closer to my killer –
Rathal was there on the mizelikon’s flank, wielding his own burning torch, yelling, failing to do anything but become entwined himself –
His battered face twisted in new agony.
I’m sorry, Rathal. I killed you too.
I raised my empty, ashen hand before my face, a primordial gesture of warding, devoid of all meaning and power – the barbs reached up, snagged my skin, the little sections of webbing between my fingers pierced and tugged at by its hooks –
The brand… the brand, the brand…
What did he mean, ‘grip the brand tightly’?
It’d seemed obvious, but how would he know that by hearing? They couldn’t see into Zyger. Unless I were to tell myself, aloud, to hold the brand more tightly… And then I’d only be saying it because he told me to say it, and he’d only know it because I was going to say it…
What use was the damn thing anyway? It’d broken! It was gone!
What am I missing?
Something he could hear…
Did mizelikon ever make a single sound?
Sounds…
What am I missing?
It was only as I repeated that crucial question to myself, looking up at my own tortured hand, that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.
I knew what I had to do.
* * *
Grip the brand tightly. An instruction from an arch-diviner. Something it doesn’t know I know. Something it can’t plan for.
I realised what I was missing – why the mizelikon looked ever-so-slightly different this time…
The white mark – the brand!
I reached up, deliberately ripping my own hand to shreds and letting the demon’s thorned tongues creep further, tearing into my midriff. I didn’t care. Pain was inevitable, and incalculably better than death.
With my final strength I slapped my chalk-white, bleeding palm down just above its eyes, between them, where its forehead should’ve been. Where the pale shape looked right.
And beneath my palm, the hidden burning rune lit up, its radiance pouring out between my fingers, as pure as sunlight.
I couldn’t see it. I wasn’t an arch-sorcerer here. But I was an arch-sorcerer beneath. Where power failed, knowledge served.
I sank those fingertips in deep, piercing both shadow and light with my mortal flesh as only an arch-sorcerer might.
The mizelikon screamed, a red-lit maw filled with tiny teeth appearing now beneath its eyes, its substance of lipless night parting to voice a singular, infernal roar of helplessness.
I gripped the brand tightly.
And I was myself once more.
I stared into the crimson eyes, and they stared back, scrunching up in pain.
“Be mine.”
The Infernal words came from my lips, comprehensible despite my injuries, and I felt the power of the mizelikon pulse through my hand. Its eyes lowered – the link between us was made whole.
Instantly, I felt the relief as what seemed to be hundreds of thorns were removed from my skin.
“Free… free him too.”
The black vines withdrew from about Rathal.
“Oi! Oi, what’s he doin’?” someone cried.
“He’s taken its allegiance!” Shadowcrafter roared.
Unconsciousness was beckoning but I was so close, so close. The white energy was still pouring out between my fingers, into my bleeding hand, into my flesh –
“Raph!” I pleaded.
Weakly, he lifted his head, his arms shaking.
“Geh – geh…”
I was slurring, but he understood. Drawing once more on some inestimable reserve of power, he pushed himself to his feet, staggering towards Temcar’s motionless form.
Shadowcrafter stepped up to the front of the crowd with a rock in his hand, moving towards the ex-diviner with murder in his eyes.
I knew what I had to do. It was my time.
It was his time.
I didn’t want to do it. But I wanted to do it.
I didn’t need to do it. But I needed to do it.
I had to make my own choice. Own the consequences.
When I drew on the eldritch’s energy to bring up the shield, the lines flickered not azure but crimson, bloody arcs rippling across the space.
A single blade, aimed at his neck. Once, he’d have had his own barriers, piles of defences to chew through – and now, he was just a man. An old, infirm, hungry man.
A soul of evil riding a bag of skin and bone, just begging for release.
I watched Shadowcrafter trying to maintain his footing, his heart pumping a fountain that sprayed scarlet from his slashed throat; it was like he was trying to dance in the red rain.
Then he fell back hard, painting those near him in his life’s-blood.
There, Emrelet. There, Zel. I did it. Are you happy now?
Did you know this was me all along, Irimar?
“No… more… itterrubtions,” I growled at them in Mundic.
I must’ve looked a right state. Some of them actually flinched as my gaze crossed them.
“He breathes, Kas!” Rath cried, even as he looped his hands under Ripplewhim’s arms and started dragging him over to me.
I took a final glance at the glowering Inceryad, at the horde of bitter figures scattered around this woe-begotten chamber.
I took a final glance, and, gritting my teeth against my shattered elbow’s complaining, I raised my free hand to open the portal.
It wouldn’t channel itself through me correctly, not here, not now – I couldn’t open Etherium or Nethernum. The portal was a cold red fire, a coruscating gateway to the Twelve Hells.
I didn’t care. The moment Rath hauled Temcar up to me, the enchanter’s weight pressing on my back, I gripped the diviner’s hand, simultaneously moving the portal over us.
Welcome to Infernum, I said to myself grimly, looking around at my new surroundings. Welcome to the place you deserve.
Welcome home.
Leave a Reply