INTERLUDE 8F: A SPECIAL BREW
“I am the unpredictable eye of the beast. I am the undergrowth churning with constant motion. I am the wildness of the wilderness. I am Lady Change.”
– from the Dairini Creed
The sun wasn’t some remote object to the Tirremine, wasn’t just some glowing bauble in the sky used for illumination, for making crops thrive. The sun was an oppressive demon that squatted upon your shoulders, forced you to keep your head down, keep your eyes from glancing up at the blinding white sky. It had taken centuries, the man reflected as he skipped down the sandstone street beside a saltwater canal, for the Mundians to impress upon the Tirremines the Realm-standard worship of Kaile. He was just crossing in front of the sun-god’s temple now, and the many-pillared hall at the top of the steps was no plain structure of white paint – it was resplendent in firestones, clad in marble. Displayed on the slopes of every lofty roof were the same motifs, golden rods arranged into the burst of shining arrows that was the god’s sigil, or in some places a pair of gold eyes. The Tirremine name for the god, Qaraime, was written in the firestones across the temple’s central archway.
But many were the places in which the god’s role as a god of shade were still depicted. In Tirremuir, it was very much one and the same. Kani had once gone into detail into the religious history of the place, explaining how the various cults of Vaylech had tried to paint Kaile Qaraime as a devil, a bright god of Infernum, instituting an age of famine until the Mundian priests arrived to spread the truth. It was patiently taught to the primitives that it was reverence of the Fly-God bringing the worst of the sun’s rays, causing the soil to dessicate, withering the crops in the fields. Kaile was no glowering demon, but the father of Joran, the grandfather of Illodin: he was a harsh god, but not unkind. The moon, which had always been revered in the dry lands, was no less his manifestation than was the sun. And, at least according to Kani, the land’s suffering had abated once the Kailite ministry took off in earnest. Tirremuir had become a paradise, a slice of Celestium on earth.
At least to the locals. Derezo was no Tirremine. Born and raised in the streets of Oldtown without a penny to his name or a roof over his head, the sunny days had been a relief from the drizzle, from the snow. Mund got hot in summer, sure, but summer never lasted long enough, and he found to his annoyance that humans simply couldn’t hibernate. In fact, a big part of the reason he’d left and tried his luck as a sell-sword was to escape the horrid conditions in Mund. If he was going to be forced to sleep outdoors, he wanted to do in a city, a country where the sky wasn’t going to lash him with ice-water six months of the year. Once he hit thirteen and could pass for fifteen, he’d headed south on the first ship that would take him, heading for sunnier seas – and quickly discovered that he’d developed no tolerance to the blasted thing. His first week on the sea had taken him unawares, and he’d almost died from the fever. It probably hadn’t helped that the first mate insisted on him continuing his duties, and continued to ply him with rum. Even now, ten years later, the sun bleached his blond hair but roasted his skin, and he had to be extraordinarily careful with regard to how he dressed, what parts of his body he left exposed to the sizzling rays.
He wore the long black urum, almost a mage-robe from Mund but with no designs, less structure to the fabric. When he had the deep hood up like right now, Derezo’s Chakobese was good enough to let him pass for one of the natives. But they didn’t usually wear gloves to protect their hands; they typically wore sandals, not boots. Still, it wasn’t like he experienced any animosity from the populace on account of his status as a foreigner – quite the opposite. It seemed almost everyone he met knew he was friends with the dragonslayers, that he’d taken part in similar expeditions with them before his early retirement. Phanar and the others were very well-liked here – not just because of their lavish spending habits, their general easygoing natures. It was that they’d succeeded. They came here chasing a dragon, and actually killed it. And it hadn’t been just any dragon. This had been Ord Ylon. This had been a nightmare out of legend and these four young heroes had arisen out of their own legends to vanquish it, send it screaming back into the world of dream and myth.
The monsters always lost, in the end.
Derezo – he was like a link between the people and their paragons. He was a stepping-stone, someone relatable that the merchants and minor nobles of Tirremuir saw as approachable, still human despite the lofty company he kept. And Derezo loved it that way. Sure, now that the whole dragon-business was fading in the public consciousness, he didn’t quite get the same treatment he’d enjoyed three months ago – but they knew his name, his face. He’d made himself useful, purchasing a few small businesses and using his significant savings to help them flourish. He had a life here, and now it was escaping him.
No, it wasn’t the locals whose animosity he bore. It was that of his own people. It was the Mundians.
It’d been okay, last year, but something had gone wrong and no one was telling him anything. He wasn’t used to this kind of silence on these kinds of matters. He’d sent messages to Phanar, asking for an update, any kind of snippet of information that could be shared with him – and the coded response was to leave Tirremuir.
Leave Tirremuir!
If these meetings continued much longer, he might just end up following Phanar’s advice – though ‘advice’ might’ve been stretching it. From the last code-word, it looked as though Phanar were giving him an order. An order! Despite them having formally broken their arrangement, upon the death of Ylon. He’d put down the letter, chuckled, and gone out for dinner with a smile on his face.
Today’s mission would assuredly prove to be a less-pleasurable luncheon, and he wasn’t wearing his boyish smile as he entered the railed-off area outside the restaurant. The man who’d summoned Derezo was sitting outside, in the full simmering glare of Kaile’s glow, and he’d taken one of the big tables to himself. His robed guards didn’t sit but stood instead, in a vague arc behind him – five of them.
Always five of them, Derezo thought darkly.
The table might’ve been big enough for eight, but the arch-magister seemed to be going out of his way to wind up the establishment’s owners. He was occupying the narrowest sliver of his chair’s seat, one leg folded atop the other, leaning on one of the arms as though an invisible person of equal slimness were seated there alongside him.
Perhaps they are.
Even in the ten seconds it took him to spot the man and pick his way between the other tables and chairs, Derezo noticed the sceptical, verging on hostile, glances being cast at the magisters by the other diners. No one would say anything to them, of course – Mundian justice was infamous, and if you didn’t have the right friends or bank-balance you could kiss your freedom goodbye. Still, Derezo knew he didn’t enjoy the same undiplomatic immunity. He hoped these very public meetings wouldn’t tar his name with the locals, that it’d all be over soon and he could return to his normal life.
“Mr. Moustache Man,” he said in greeting as he plopped himself down opposite the arch-magister.
“Mr. Alterkain.”
The older man’s moustache quivered as he spoke, and Derezo felt the smile come unexpectedly to his lips.
He acts like it doesn’t get to him, but it does.
It wasn’t just the arch-diviner, either. He noted the five hooded magisters expressing their general disapproval – pursed lips, narrowed eyes, hands on hips… Derezo didn’t care. They weren’t going to touch him, not any way that mattered. If anything, mocking the magisters’ boss loudly-enough would ensure the Tirremines overheard, ensure they knew he wasn’t part of their schemes.
“We ordering?” Derezo asked blandly, eyeing the menu chalked on a tablet beside the restaurant’s main entrance. “I’m up for the garlic bread, but if you want to go all in, you’re paying. My wine-shop just restocked, and I’d love to help with the bill, but…” He spread his hands.
“There is no need for us to order,” the magister said quietly. “I just have a few more questions for you, if you please. You will take chilled water, yes?”
Derezo opened his mouth then closed it again, ducking his head in a quick nod.
Why does he want to ask me things, when he always seems to know what I’m going to say?
The chief magister nodded to one of his underlings, and they scurried off inside to find a waiter.
“I don’t really get what’s going on here,” Derezo admitted, running the flat of his palm across his brow to smear away the sweat that was about to drip down his face.
“We are at lunch.”
Derezo grinned. “Now that’s more like it, Mr. Moustache Man! No – you know what I mean. Why you’re here. Why you’re always asking these stupid questions. No offence! But… well, okay, maybe a little offence… but seriously, why? If you can just tell me what you’re looking for, maybe I can help you.”
“I do not know what I’m looking for,” was the terse answer.
Moustache Man wouldn’t even meet his gaze.
“Is it really that bad? I know Redgate was a bad guy -”
Now the arch-magister met his gaze, staring at him in disbelief.
“– no, really…” Derezo was suddenly left floundering. “I heard what happened, right from Kani and Ana’s lips. I know… he was the worst. But – he’s dead. Why ask me about him, when –“
“Because,” the arch-magister hissed, leaning forwards, “every magister we’ve sent into the mountains has failed to return. No messages crossing the area south of the Obarsk Waste have been delivered to their recipients. We are blind. I am blind.”
It took Derezo a moment to catch on.
“Wait – you mean there’s not really an ore shortage in Calcuun? What about the ivory trade? Was that all a lie too? I swear –“
“I swear, you will silence yourself, or fall prey to what you now think of as ‘Mundian justice’.”
Derezo shut his mouth.
They’re reading my thoughts.
“Yes, we are,” the arch-magister said in response to the realisation that had only just crossed his mind. “We are using a tele-temporal link. You are an open book to us, I’m afraid.”
A number of salacious, rather crude images crossed through his mind.
“How pleasant.” The moustached man sighed. “In any case, you shall now hold your tongue. Yes, Mr. Alterkain. We have a calamity of unknown proportions taking shape upon the Realm’s border.” He tried to smile – Mr. Moustache Man actually tried to smile – and it was a painful thing to behold. “You see now, don’t you? You know of Timesnatcher?”
Derezo nodded furtively. It’d been Blinkwind in charge of the city-defence when he’d left, but everyone had heard of Timesnatcher.
“He is the one man whose powers, whose ability to perceive, I esteem above my own. I have consulted with him, and so I came to you, seeking my salvation.”
“H-he,” Derezo had trouble swallowing, “he sent you, to me?”
Mr. Zakimel nodded with his eyes.
“But why…” He felt a tightness, a lump in his throat, and croaked through it. “What do I…”
Vaguely-determined intuitions went flashing through his head.
All that Everseer business. All that about the dragons…
“You could do with that drink.” Zakimel got up out of his seat, twisting strangely, hands reaching up as though pinching at the air –
Then he sat down again, holding a bottle of water and two cups.
“Not quite chilled.”
A beautiful, dimpled magister behind him glanced at the glass bottle, a thread of platinum hair poking out of her hood’s rim as she moved her head slightly. The transparent container in his hand immediately frosted over, beads of condensation forming and running down it the very moment she raised her chin again.
“Thank you. Here, Derezo.”
The retired adventurer stared, nonplussed, as his hand reached out automatically to receive the drink. He’d heard of archmagery, of course, and once he even saw Ibbalat use a spell to move faster than an arrow. But to use such magic, for something so trivial as a spluttering lunch-guest? To call on the elements, just to cool a drink on a hot day? These were actions that displayed respect to Derezo, even as they put him in his place.
He drank his cup down anyway.
And was promptly sick, rust-fluid pouring out of his throat, making his teeth tingle, his tongue coil up. Redness covered his urum.
“Blood?” he panted. “Blood? What in the Twelve Hells, Mr…”
But Zakimel was staring at him, slack-jawed; the archmage glanced back at the transparent bottle of fresh, chilled water; then at the next table, where two Tirremines were also vomiting, red-purple darkness gushing down their chins. Now that Derezo saw it from afar, he realised just how strange the stuff looked.
But why is Zakimel surprised? Derezo wondered in a stupor.
Then the world erupted into scarlet flame, and he flung himself back in his chair, gawping. It was hard to take it all in.
Imps, everywhere. He’d seen their like before but never in such numbers, dozens and dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, forcing the screaming people to remain in their seats.
And at the very same moment, a man appeared on the table, almost directly between Derezo and the arch-magister – a curtain of fire peeled back to reveal the cross-legged, casual shape. The interloper was leaning back on his hands, gloved palms pressed against the table’s surface.
The spider-mask, its eight dark eyes – that was the same. But the various portcullises, barred doorways, spiked fences – every design stitched into the fabric of his red mage-robe glowed now, if it could be called glowing. The patterns were suffused with a strange black light that went curling about, tracing the shapes: shifting, visible darkness that made it look as though the ex-champion’s robe was crawling, teeming with shadows.
The magisters – none of them really reacted. Derezo could see the moustache bristling as Zakimel’s jaw worked overtime, like he was grinding his teeth. The platinum-haired magister’s eyes had narrowed; Derezo almost thought he saw lightning flickering there across her irises for a moment, as she focussed her gaze on Redgate.
For that was who it was, assuredly. Phanar, Kani, they’d all been wrong. He wasn’t dead at all. He was here, alive, after everything.
The hidden eyes turned to regard Derezo.
“Our dear diviners were looking back at the moment I told you I would return for the name of your vintage, I believe,” the voice echoed through the mask.
It sounded different to before. Almost metallic, hollow. But no less level. No less cold.
“Now you have tasted my wine, the blood of the vampire, with a few tweaks of my own addition. These fine, upstanding fellows are aware that I hold a number of hostages. Mr. Zakimel has just now witnessed at least a few shards of the possible futures here – have you not?”
Vampire?
The masked head had turned back to the arch-magister.
“I have, Lord Othelroe. It is… inhumane of you.”
“You think this assessment would hinder me?” Redgate affected a shrug. “I have never felt bound by those restrictions placed by man and god upon the actions of lesser folk. To be truly human is to exceed the human.”
“And this… excess?” Zakimel’s voice bristled like his moustache but he didn’t move a single finger, even for an instant, keeping his hands half-folded on the table near the water-bottle, the cup. “Threatening to force these people into becoming vampires? It is beneath you, Lyferin.”
“An appropriate threat, then, for the likes of you.” The ex-champion cast his head back as if to ignore these powerful fellows, turning his dark lenses up towards the sun, a gesture of complete, overweening arrogance. “What less would hold off your foolishness? And no, Tervos, I did not permit you to be familiar. I understand you have unveiled my identity, but, please, do not beat me around the head with it. It is most unbecoming.”
He must have shields, Derezo realised.
“Your lordship has been revoked, your lands seized.” Zakimel spoke the words as though they were being forced from him. “This you must surely already realise. The House is now under the leadership of your second cousin, Bertelos. Ilswent, at least –”
“Indeed. And you call me lord nonetheless. This bespeaks your intent: to survive this encounter. To leave this city. Your flattery does not go amiss, and yet…”
Redgate started to laugh, a chuckle rapidly becoming cackling – not a sound designed to mock or intimidate, but a genuine release of amusement.
Derezo felt his eyes itching. He longed to blink, but couldn’t take his eyes off the dragonslayer.
The true dragonslayer.
He wasn’t alone. Without having to look, he was aware of the fact that every pair of eyes in the place was glued to Redgate. It wouldn’t have surprised him if a number of passers-by had been mesmerised by the spectacle by now, stopping in the street to stare in horror.
One of the magisters, an imposing-looking woman in a green robe, spun on the spot and folded her arms out, fingers spread – the fabric of her sleeves seemed to melt into feathers –
“Stop!” Zakimel barked, snapping his head about to glare at her –
But it was too late.
Even as she turned away, something took shape about her – a shadow that seemed to dim the sun just by its very presence here. Within a heartbeat she was being whirled within a tornado of living darkness, and that darkness started to deepen, deepen until a huge clot of pure seething blackness was all that remained of her –
“I beg you,” Zakimel said with wide eyes, gazing imploringly at the sorcerer, “release her. I told her not to act, recognising the precision of your traps.“
Redgate shifted his weight just so that he could raise a hand and wave it lazily in dismissal. “Certain of my traps. But no. Look at your underling, Zakimel. Study your colleague, men and women of the Magisterium.”
The void had become glossy, reflective. The roughly-humanoid shape was jagged at the edges, twisting, constantly being moulded, pulled and pressed, contorting on the air.
“Jaevette was brave,” Redgate said in a voice laden with unusual sympathy – respect, even. “I fought alongside her twice. She even saved my life, upon a time… Or so she would have seen it.”
Everyone regarded the shiny darkness that had been a woman.
“Would anyone else be interested to hear her screams?” For once, Redgate sounded uncertain of himself. “I think I can let them –“
“She saved your life, and zis is how you repay her?”
It was the magister with lightning in her eyes. She hadn’t moved, but the anger in the outlander’s tone was unmistakeable.
“You have a remarkable grasp on the facts, Miss…?”
“Undo zis,” she replied, voice shaking slightly as she ignored his question, “undo it at once and ve shall be lenient.”
“Lenient?” Redgate laughed again. “Oh, your superior wouldn’t stand for that, I’m afraid, madam.”
“Zen I shall take it over his head!”
“No. No, Henthae isn’t here, is she, Zakimel? That would just be too good…”
Zakimel was shaking his head, staring at the table. “She is… She is polishing her rings… at her desk…”
“How long had you been in love with her?”
The sorcerer’s use of past-tense wasn’t lost on Derezo – he was no newbie when it came to life-threatening situations and this was just about as life-threatening as it got.
I need to get out of here, he told himself, doing his best to snap his thoughts out of their paralysis, their shock at this sudden turn of events.
Still, it was difficult. The drama unfolding before him was like a performance designed to enthral him. He couldn’t tear his eyes, his ears, his mind away.
Zakimel was at first denying his love for this Henthae, whoever she was – then his voice dropped away as he stared, realising how the nothingness on the air was smaller now, its sharp edges curling in on its central mass –
The wizard-magister had a nimbus of living white fire in her clenched fist and still Redgate ignored her, keeping his face tipped up towards the sky.
“I think you mistook me,” the dimpled wizard grated. “I do not mean Henthae. Leniency is a svift death. Ze ozzer options… you vould not vont to know zem.”
She hates him, Derezo realised. This goes beyond Jaevette…
Redgate finally brought his chin down, fixing his unseen gaze on the girl. He slowly leaned forwards, freeing his arms, then lifted his hands to his mask and hood. A practised motion revealed the face Derezo remembered, the young handsome lordling with his brown hair now unkempt.
He didn’t remember the pallor, or the purple light in the eyes. The unholy glow was so bright that the radiance stained the white skin of Redgate’s upper face, even against the sun’s rays.
Undead… spell-caster… that means he’s…
Lich.
Lich-lord.
He hadn’t been fond of the sorcerer from the first moment he’d met him. When Ibbalat related a diluted version of what they’d been through while travelling with the archmage, Derezo’s first impressions had been validated. But he hadn’t understood until this moment just what this all portended.
This wasn’t a threat you ran from. Survival wasn’t enough.
Redgate had to die again. Right now, and properly this time.
If these magisters were going to attempt it, he had to find a way to help.
He glanced about. Surrounding him, the terracotta floor of the dining area was dominated by the sorcerer’s forces. Panicked customers were being kept in their seats by swarms of minor demons, and those who tried to fight back were being enchanted into submission, or threatened with immolation by the imps wielding fireballs.
He had nothing on him, none of his old weapons.
And my old skills?
There were knives on the tables, after all.
But what can I achieve, really? Am I going to throw my life away for nothing? I could stab an imp, maybe… but against Redgate himself?
He might as well have considered stabbing a mountain, for all the myriad protections the lich surely enjoyed.
“So how are my old travelling companions?” Redgate asked, turning to Derezo with the amethyst eyes, exposing him to the full effect of the awful gaze for the first time. All thoughts of self-sacrifice deserted him.
“Phanar and Kanthyre? Ibbalat?” A hideous smile bled across the sorcerer’s lips. “Anathta? They are all destined to serve me – you know this?”
Never, monster.
“I shan’t be denied, countryman, and when dear Ana is mine again –”
The wizard-girl’s shriek of defiance was preceded by a single, blinding lance of lightning that went spearing out from her hands, just past Zakimel’s ear, the scream positively quiet following the thunder of her attack.
Blinking against the after-blur of the spell, Derezo looked over at the cinders of the innocent Tirremine who’d been sitting in a chair twenty feet directly behind Redgate. Their charred skeleton crumbled down in the unharmed furniture.
No shields. Just intangibility.
The magister wasn’t looking at the corpse she’d created. An ugly grimace was on her face, and her eyes, burning almost silver, were glued to the other corpse. The corpse that hadn’t stayed dead.
If Kani couldn’t keep him down…
“Tut tut,” Redgate chided the wizard, regarding her as coolly as his scintillating eyes could manage. “And we were having such a nice conversation, Miss…?”
“You know zat ve’ve met.”
“Of course, but would you spoil our game? I’d not address you as Emrelet without your permit. Would you prefer ‘Feychilde’s consort’, or –”
“No!” Zakimel cried.
Emrelet brought forth a sword of electricity, far brighter than the first bolts she’d hurled, unsheathing the tremendous weapon from the very air –
And a huge demon like a spiked boulder of dense, black metal fell right on top of her.
The magisters on either side of her flinched aside, but there was no way for the wizard to dodge, so she went down instead. Like a child diving feet-first into water she slid into the stone, extending her arms, her sword over her head; lightning spraying out about it, the demon followed, tearing into the earth.
Snaaaaaap.
Crackkkkkkk.
Duuuuuuuum!
“How tiresome,” Redgate murmured to himself beneath the rending and crashing. “Perhaps I should have killed her outright – but such bravery is to be rewarded with a champion’s death, and she at least sought not at first to flee…”
More screams and yells from the crowd. Approving laughter from the imps. Silence from the magisters, at least outwardly, even as they were forced to find new footing, the pit yawning between them.
The ground under Derezo’s chair tipped suddenly, the reverberations of the duel between wizard and demon causing the whole area to shudder and groan.
“What do you want here, Lyferin?” Zakimel shouted. “What do you want, really? Are you going to attack Tirremuir?”
Redgate’s smile was back.
“The city itself? Oh no, I’ll leave every building intact. There are examples of acceptable architecture – I’m certain I’ll find suitable accommodation in some palatial house or other. The people themselves? They are largely an irritation, yes, but only in their current form. I shall permit them to stay, once they’re all doing what they’re told. My horde must grow, until it can grow no more; that’s just the way it’s done.”
“Lyferin,” Zakimel cried over the continuing upheaval in the earth, “Lyferin, please. You were a champion. For the love of Celestium – they aren’t people once they’re dead! Can’t you see that?”
“Yet you plead with a dead man?” Redgate’s gaze moved across the magisters, looking over Zakimel’s head. “You, there, with the pathetic-looking shield-work. Lower your defences.”
“So that’s why you moved on us now!” Zakimel was actually wearing a fierce smile on his face and his moustache had never been so still. “You knew – the Incursion forecast –”
“I knew you would leave tomorrow, yes.” Redgate sounded impatient now, still staring at the curvaceous, older magister who had to be an arch-sorceress. “You – what is your name? You must stop looking for a way out. If you do not lower your shield, I will create thirteen vampires right now and send them to Mund.”
Zakimel vanished, reappearing less than half a second later thirty feet away, almost at the rail about the restaurant. His entourage were with him.
The world seemed to dim even more.
The three remaining magister-guards were clinging to Zakimel, but they were all trapped together in a swirling, moaning column of purple energy that cast its shadow over everything.
“Bravo!” Redgate raised a gloved hand and tapped his palm with the fingertips of the other hand, a silent, sarcastic applause. “I did wonder whether I could force you to gather them up like that.”
Derezo tipped back his head, and saw the purple pillar wasn’t a column – it was a tree, five feet wide at the trunk and over forty in height. Its substance wasn’t simply shifting – the thing was comprised of a million small faces, eyes and mouths frozen open in perpetual horror. Its moaning was their moaning, its shape created by the constant flow as they went writhing around and around, up and up – until at last they were pumped along its vast branches. Like dark leaves the dead faces streamed into the sky, where they eventually vanished, shadowing the sun as they went.
“Do you like it?”
Derezo lowered his gaze, and cringed to see Redgate there, right there staring at him.
“I – I –”
“Look at them.” The lich-lord gestured lazily. “A collection of Mund’s finest trapped, and now powerless, thanks to my gift. I might extract all manner of lore from the old one, and all the promises I require from the fledgling sorcerer – and I won’t even be needing the others, or any advanced persuasion techniques. How efficient.”
The lich’s gesturing hand slowly formed a fist. Two of the magisters inside the moaning tree slapped their hands to the sides of their heads.
Cries of protest came from the moustached diviner and sorceress – cries of pain came from what must’ve been the other diviner and the enchanter. But all the sounds they made were muted by the ghostly substance in which they were snared, and drowned out by the tree, by the general tumult from crowds.
The lich’s fist tightened, and the two magisters’ heads exploded. A fine trail of sand streamed down from Redgate’s clenched hand, pearly white grains showering onto the table.
The headless magisters didn’t just fall down dead – they evaporated into the purple pillar, carried away on the nethernal tornado. Derezo could see the mouth of the sorceress-magister opening and closing as she spoke frantically to Zakimel, but there was no way to hear the words and lip-reading was far too difficult even at the best of times.
This was decidedly not the best of times.
Redgate slid to his feet without overtly moving, a dizzying thing to watch – it was as though the whole world tipped over to accommodate the lich-lord’s desire.
Once he was upright, he spoke. “As for you, Derezo – you shall have to be made a vampire after all, I think. You shall serve as emissary, to your former friends, and convey my regards. I very much doubt you will be able to do them much harm, until they are forced to destroy you. That shall harm them. That shall harm them very much…”
Only as the lump of iron burst from the ground and the wizard-girl followed it into the air did Derezo realise the rumbling he’d been hearing wasn’t the blood thumping in his ears.
It looked like she’d wrapped the demon up in some kind of silvery substance – the stuff was binding its limbs, straps of base metal thicker than Derezo’s waist woven around its torso.
One rivulet of the wizard’s metal had forced its way inside the demon’s mouth, and as they both reached the open air Emrelet weakly raised her fingers – lightning flowed from the sky, touching the silver and coursing inside the fiend’s black body.
For just a moment the demon was illuminated from within – the roasting smell made plain that inside its shell there was something like flesh. Then it collapsed with a loud clang, a husk of spiky iron, and started falling apart.
Only after it died did the girl seem to realise the precariousness of the situation; she glanced at her trapped colleagues, and there was true fear in her eyes when she returned them to the lich-lord.
“Very well-executed, madam,” Redgate murmured. “You shall make a fine general for my armies.”
There was no lightning left in the girl’s wide eyes. Even she was terrified.
There was a moment of indecision – just one moment. Derezo watched as she made her mind up.
She vanished, plunging up into the sky, not even at an angle – just falling upwards. A form of flight and fleeing designed for maximum speed. Getting her out of his zone of influence.
The lich-lord laughed, and threw his arms wide, gazing after her.
A magenta rainbow ripped through the sky, and a –
Derezo’s mind shattered, seeing Ord Ylon’s remains appear in the air, a zombified monster of immense proportions. He felt the putrid wind of its wings as they flapped, slow and forceful.
He fell backwards out of his chair as though the screams of the enraptured Tirremine audience propelled him. He was able to roll with the motion, then half-ran, half-scrambled towards safety –
Safety – safety –
There was no upper range. There was no real limit to the arch-sorcerer’s reach. Already the sleeve of his arm cast a shadow over Mund. Where could Derezo go?
Away. Away!
He made it perhaps four yards before the icy grip of a wight fastened about his shoulders, hefting him and slapping him down onto his back upon the tiled stone.
It was a kobold. An undead kobold, its bleached, mangy fur dripping with putrefaction.
It didn’t matter. Something had broken inside Derezo’s neck. He couldn’t move. He would lie here, between the tables of screaming people, and the repulsive wight would kill him… He would awaken as a vampire…
Then the wight paused, glancing back as if uncertain of its task.
Under its arm, Derezo saw Redgate standing on the table – over its head, the glistening dragon-corpse climbing the air –
And something else.
A burning portal opened fifty feet up, directly over the lich-lord, and this time it was like a golden gateway of well-defined bars opening on a yawning, magenta darkness behind.
Some amorphous, gleaming presence came through as the gate swung wide, resolving itself into a winged man with the head of a lion. In his clawed grip he bore a sword that trailed starlight.
The wind shrieked – the lion roared, gold mane streaming – and like a comet the strange creature descended at the lich.
But Redgate only laughed again, taking off to meet this new foe with greater, steel-barbed wings springing from his robe – and the wight turned back to Derezo, grinning as it reached out once more with its chilling fingers, stretching to lay hold of his throat, complete his transformation.
Phanar – I’m sorry…
I should have obeyed.
Then all such choice was ripped from him, removed forever.
* * *
Derezo’s last memory as a living man was the icy grip, squeezing him so hard it felt like the wight was trying to pop his head off. He never afterwards recalled the moment of his death. His consciousness snapped long before then.
Yet it coalesced all the same in the shadowland, and went whither such spirits were bound, finding itself at last crying out in bliss, adrift in the red river. Eldritch moons coursed overhead and only hours later, apparently, Derezo was back in shadowy Tirremuir, attending upon Master with a crate of bottles of his best grape… receiving his own cup of thick, dark wine.
Receiving his orders.
Deep down inside, there was rejection. The old Derezo still existed, contorting, hidden like a pearl in a clam on the seabed. But he couldn’t deny his nature. Couldn’t deny the weight of all that water keeping him concealed. Couldn’t deny his master.
As the waves drew him on by daylight hours towards the city that had birthed him, he lay in the same bliss as he’d found in Nethernum. He was dry and comfortable inside his coffin. He knew his purpose. He knew his place, and, even if he wept against it, his new, pallid flesh craved such surety. He would bear Phanar the message he needed to hear.
The monsters always won in the end.
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