QUARTZ 9.10: THE FOUNTAINS OF MERIZET
“Your culture has evaporated under the weight of its own questioning. Your religion has degraded and lost all meaning amongst the people. Economics and politics is the philosophy of the cynical. Brondor rules with saddened eyes. The value in profit is depleted; the profit of values has been forgotten. All virtues of your ancestors, abandoned. Physical competency is the only currency. You must close one of your eyes. You must fall back into the half-dream. Or you will die awake, perish of exhaustion.”
– from ‘The Edgeless Light’, ch. 9
Through the tempest’s stillness and all its endless layers of frozen rain I coursed, my old colleagues at my back. Our host of madmen followed close. I had a fantastic repertoire of powerful summons at my fingertips.
I had to hope it would be enough. Trepidation rose up within me continually, and, continually, I put it back down again.
Courage. We all have it. It’s all we need.
All we need.
The first pass of the weave came from my hand to Ly’s, to Min’s, before spreading out and around, a barrier of force the likes of which I’d never before witnessed. It didn’t matter that the heretics didn’t know what they were doing – we three former champions had enough coherence to make up for their lack of experience. Aramas fed it, too – I’d tasted his power once and I found I could discern its presence in the hyperactive shield we formed. Not just his… the powers of seven other arch-sorcerers, spread evenly-enough about the host that I could keep Netherhame and Shallowlie by my side. The heretics might’ve been unpractised, but they weren’t just acting on instinct – they were being directed. Our conjuration whirled about us, thick and gelatinous, spiralling from pole to pole like a great glistening serpent, its ice-blue honeycomb scales encrusted in a million pounds of powdered diamonds.
More than that, Tanra and Vardae had provided the nexus of a chronomantic bubble the likes of which would’ve impressed Arreath Ril himself. We raced southwards across the twisted midday-midnight sky, and for all the seeming speed with which we moved, I hadn’t heard a gong in what felt like minutes.
The streets below were a mess, pavements covered in the entrails of buildings, carpets and curtains and shattered furniture. Actual entrails were there too, and a couple of pale bodies amongst the wreckage – but only occasionally was flesh being left behind, as far as I could tell. Most of the living breathing blood-bags, those fonts of dimensional energy known as mortals, had been harvested right down to the bone. My sorcerous perceptions didn’t touch on many actual corpses, save the zombies used to staff many of the outlets. Minimal blood had been wasted, from what I could see; none of my current eldritches augmented my sensory faculties the way Zel or the vampire had done, and I sometimes missed all the extra information provided by those powers. Certainly it would’ve been nice to retain the dark-sight, especially now. If anything the storm-clouds seemed to have thickened since my stop-off at the Thirteen Candles, the last smatterings of light dimmed right down to blackness. I could barely peer into the interiors of the busted-apart buildings, yawning like the broken mouths of shadowy caverns. Many of the artificial lights employed by the rich had clearly been extinguished by the demons’ reckless violence. The towers and offices, the dormitories and shopping-halls – at least one in every three we flew over had been gutted. But the robbers weren’t looking for goods and gold – oh no. The inhabitants, the workers, the owners – these were their currency.
I wasn’t sure which of my companions were orchestrating it, but cadres of heretics were dropping down, investigating the most heinous-looking sites. Not one to be left out of the fun, I led the weave directly into one such tower, one of the many imitation-Maginoxes, a pentagonal structure of coloured glass that stood perhaps two percent the height of the real thing. Someone had cheaped out on the ensorcelled glass, in this case, though – most of the walls had been blown out by infernal magic, and the place was a breeding-ground.
We swept through one side and out the other, and the weave itself sufficed to blow out the rest of the walls, thrusting approximately two hundred fiendish creatures out through the glass –
And the whole host of them were left paralysed, hanging in the air, contorted amidst the multicoloured glass shards.
Approximately two hundred magical effects ripped through them, the glee of the heretics plan to hear in their cries as they struck out.
Gong!
I looked across at Netherhame as we exited the place, soaring through the broken windows not two arm’s lengths to my left, Shallowlie just past her.
“You said I’m the same as you. Well… you’re not wrong. Have you – have you killed people?”
Netherhame glowered at me, while Shallowlie looked across at her, accusation in her gaze.
“I killed three magisters less than an hour ago.” I let the words out; they wanted to be free, and I didn’t have the energy, the will, to contain them. “They – they were killing people. Inkatra-users… but just kids? Desperate kids?”
“Feychilde,” Dimdweller said gruffly.
I turned my attention to the old dwarf. His beard flowed free despite the non-wind, and his big broad nose protruded clear out of the hood’s recesses.
“Feychilde, don’t cry.”
I looked down stupidly, startled; it was only as he drew attention to it that I realised I could feel the tickle of twin tears rolling down my unreactive cheeks.
“Well I never,” I said, suddenly struggling to control my breathing.
“It can’t have been easy, lad,” the dwarf went on in a kindly voice. “You already received punishment befitting the crime. Did you… did you truly go to Magicrux Zyger?”
He was operating without his future-sense, clutching blindly at the straws of destiny for a finger-hold.
But he was good. Good at distracting me.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“What… was it like?”
I grunted, swallowed. “Well… don’t plan a trip. It gets a thumbs-down from me at least.”
“Did you see Neverwish? Herreld, was his name. Herreld Tornakost. I know – I know he was sent to Zyger but… much like yourself? Much like you he was sent, condemned on false pretences. The dragon manipulated every…“
I stopped the old dwarf with a wave of my hand and a nod of my head.
“Yeah. Yeah, I saw him. And… no. I… He didn’t make it.”
I felt reticent to start sharing everything with them, like I’d started with Tanra. Tanra-Vardae… I honestly had no idea which of the two I’d been blurting all my secrets to. But these three – they didn’t need to know about the Inceryad-tree, or who else had been freed from the archmage-prison. At least not until I’d had chance to collect myself, take counsel with those I trusted…
Like Tanra-Vardae? Irimar? Borasir?
There was no more point in keeping quiet, I supposed. Once the Incursion had been dealt with, the people needed to know the truth. These secrets… they weren’t really mine, were they? They were the Magisterium’s. The Srol’s. As far as I was concerned, if the twins gave it their seal of approval, I could tell everyone everything. If I revealed that eldritches could emancipate those trapped in Zyger, would there be a sudden surge of sorcerers attempting to free someone? Perhaps taking money to do so? Would the magistry be able to stop them?
No. There were too many variables to consider. On the one hand I knew the Magisterium’s judges hardly held to the tenets of Kultemeren for all that they wore his symbols. There was a fair chance a number of those doomed to die in Zyger were innocent, just like I’d been, the investigators too-afraid to properly-explore their heads to distinguish fact from fiction.
On the other hand, had I been innocent? Only time would tell whether the world would be better off for my escape. And the others down there… the gods alone knew what mischief might result if they were to rejoin the population of Mund.
Yet… could they be used?
I needed the twins. If anything in this dimension was trustworthy, it was them. How much longer before they arrived? Surely Orcan would have them here soon.
How would I even know? They couldn’t contact me while I wore the crown…
Gong!
“What about the twins?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could manage. It troubled me that I couldn’t remember seeing their mass of involuntary shielding extruding anywhere from the towers, even with the Candles’ own wards broken, the massive blue globe which I surely should’ve seen if they’d been housed within…
“Arxine and Orieg?” Lyanne shot back, then swiftly answered her own question: “Yeah, they’re fine. Wrynka’s looking after them. Don’t think this is everyone who wants to fight.”
I caught the peculiar twist to her voice, the unusually-hurried pattern of her speech.
“Is there anyone else I could’ve been talking about?” I asked.
“Saff and Tarr – they – they’re still in Magisterium custody.”
“You’re struggling, you know.”
Lyanne threw back her hood, revealing the pallid, uncomely face and bedraggled knots of lank hair – transformed by her nethernal state into a truly fearsome visage.
“He knows!” she barked, spinning on the air to glance at Shallowlie and Dimdweller. “He knows, already.”
The dwarf didn’t seem much to care. Min only wore a self-satisfied expression, as though she’d expected nothing less of me.
“Which is it?” I enquired. “The druids? The diviners?”
Now Netherhame wore her own shrewd expression, delight in the lustrous lavender-pearl eyes.
“Why – where are the enchanters? What do you know you aren’t telling us?”
Enough! I thought, aghast. But the damage was already done. If she hadn’t figured it out by now, she soon would, or someone else who knew me better.
“I think the whole world’s going to find out soon,” I muttered.
“Kas!” came the cry of a Tanra, streaming in from below me to hang in the air at my side, matching my pace. “Kas, we’re almost there. I’m – we’re losing our grip on the spell.”
“That’s to be expected.” I didn’t slow, but I turned to look at her all the same.
Which of them is it? I wondered, searching her chestnut eyes.
She was troubled. She wasn’t gnawing at her lip, but I could tell she wanted to.
She certainly looked like my Tanra… except for the locks of ghostly hair, the stress-lines, everything that made her look like someone else entirely… but it was meaningless anyway, wasn’t it? If there was even a vague possibility this was her… I had to treat her as if that was who she was.
“What’s bothering you?” I asked in the end.
She glanced at Dimdweller, took a deep breath, then looked back at me and smiled.
“Nothing. Let’s… let’s do this.”
“Did Voicenoise manage to contact Spirit?”
“Yeah, they’ve been delayed. When you – when we left Firenight Square, the others weren’t as lucky as us. They managed to convene with Doomspeaker’s lot, then eh… a dweonatar intercepted them. Ironvine and Mountainslide fought it off, but they’re twenty-foot deep in demons by the Westrise right now. They’ll be along to join the party soon.”
“So they won?” I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe these arch-fiends aren’t as impressive as they’re made out to be.”
I looked to Netherhame, but she just scowled.
“Ask the livin’ puddle how impressive they are,” she spat back.
Winterprince was only a few yards behind, still gloomily silent, and he gave no outward sign as to whether or not he’d heard her. His cowl was still hiding most of his face, save for the strong, stubble-covered chin.
I looked back to Tanra. “So what’s the deal? What are we going up against?”
“The thing – the Sinphalamax –“
“Wait, you mean – that’s what it is? We’re gonna throw down against the Sinphalamax?”
“Every indication, right?”
“What even is a Sinphalamax?” Dimdweller asked.
“The Sinphalamax,” Tanra said darkly.
I licked my lips. “You mean… I always took it as a plural but – well yeah, it could be a demon in a class of its own. They aren’t going to give away their actual name, are they? Sinphalamax… I suppose you could think of it as a title?”
“What does it mean?”
I frowned, trying to concentrate on the possible etymologies of the word, and it was Lyanne who replied first.
“Weaver of Woe.”
I nodded, seeing Min doing the same on the other side of her.
“That sounds right.” It was hardly good news though, was it. “Sorry, Tanra. Go on. The Sinphalamax…”
“Oh yeah – well, we don’t even know if she’s still there. We’re going in blind. The magisters who reported seeing her at the Fountains – that was ages ago. We can’t see-see her, you know, and I bet that thing isn’t helping. We aren’t going to be able to Master our way around this one.”
I swivelled my head back around to look forwards again. Everyone hated my crown – I’d got the message already.
It was the other titbit of information my mind seized on.
‘She.’
“No,” I said firmly. “She’s there.”
“How do you propose to know something like that?”
I just gestured at the absolute blackness ahead of us.
“Sorcerer stuff, maybe. Can’t you feel it?”
“I fee’ it, Kas,” Min said.
I glanced at her, then supercharged satyr-reflexes brought my eyes snapping across, farther to my left.
“There!” I cried, throwing up my hand.
Something was listening to us, listening to me, from halfway up the side of a broad, blocky tower. Hiding there in the gloom.
Then it unfurled the massive wings that’d been tucked about its body, that’d been concealing its form and blending it seamlessly into its darkened surroundings. All at once a pair of brilliant, blinding lights burst forth from its face, and I saw a burning chain clutched in one of its newly-emerged hands.
It wasn’t some minor creature clinging to the wall, oh no. Its feet touched the ground.
Titan-class – the monochrome marble statue of a winged man looked across at us, any remnant of beauty to its visage hideously marred by its obvious contempt.
Cries of alarm ripped out from a hundred tongues, and I heard Uwaine’s real voice for the first time. A low, choked mumble, as if the stubble on his chin extended right back down his throat.
“Dweonatar.”
* * *
As much as we couldn’t see the future, neither could our enemy. It couldn’t fight us. It couldn’t flee us. Whatever it attempted, it failed.
It came barrelling towards us in a timestream all of its own, a rapid series of broken images confronting my eye as it surged up to our weave. Within a couple of heartbeats, before we’d had chance to do any organising, it was ripping into our combined shielding with multiple simultaneous strikes of its burning whip. For all that it was the strongest barrier Mund had likely seen in centuries, the azure honeycomb protections were not impervious to harm. The weapon of a demon like this carried with it a myriad of infernal effects, not the least of which was a penetrative quality, permitting it to bite into our weave without any apparent effort on behalf of the wielder. Its disdainful smile only seemed to grow as it raked across our path, passing right in front of me.
The weave weakened instantly – not due to the attack, but due to one or two of our arch-sorcerers balking suddenly, dropping their spells, perhaps even moving to retreat –
I was certain at least some of the others could be counted on to try to bolster the morale of the troops, keep them from losing cohesion, but I was outside the link and I had to add my own contribution.
“Hold!” I barked, throwing more than my fair share of energy into the shield to keep it firm. “Strike back, damn it! Send it back to the Twelve Hells!”
The first flashes of wizardry came lancing forth, sporadically, as if the casters were testing cold water with their toes, worried about a potential counter-attack. Then, with increasing frequency, gouts of molten heat and long forks of lightning came pouring out from within the weave’s perimeter, blasting our foe as it went arcing about our formation.
I wasn’t certain whether it was just that the dweonatar was so unused-to being assailed, or whether it was the sheer frequency of the attacks – but it failed to evade the majority of the onslaught. Maybe it didn’t even seek to do so. Again and again our spells washed over it. Waves of frost left it with a sparkling sheen covering its marble-like body, slowing its movements noticeably – lightning struck its wings, forcing it to catch and turn aside the next bolts with its whip – then a flurry of fiery seeds came flying into its face, erupting into a conflagration the force of which our weave barely contained, bucking and twisting in the wake of the explosion.
We weren’t usually able to fling blades from the weave’s surface, yet it seemed one of the heretics had somehow developed the capability. Several spikes of blue force went cascading down at the dweonatar’s whip as it intersected the defences, seemingly striking at the weapon itself – and not without effect. The spikes seemed to grip the links of the chain, snagging the infernal lash, causing the huge statue to stumble as it careened about us. It was only with some effort that the demon tugged it loose.
Perhaps recognising that it wouldn’t be able to fully-penetrate the weave, the dweonatar spent a few precious seconds in contemplation. It almost halted, its face upturned to the night, against which the lights of its eyes dimmed. Its stuttering motions brought its body just a handful of yards to the left, to the right, avoiding the worst blasts by instincts that operated without even looking; it appeared heedless of the dozens of spells still successfully crashing into and over it, staring up at the storm as though it could interpret the signs in the black coils of cloud.
“Die, fiend!” someone screeched from my right, just below me. “Die, and may your low road be slow and hard and filled with fire!”
Lightning streaked forth from her fingertips, and, following the blinding bolts as best I could manage, it appeared her blasts were amongst those the demon evaded.
I recognised her voice. That would be Heretic Thirteen… she who’d been Emrelet’s nemesis, that day on the heath by Ryntol Wood.
Now – my minion.
“Yes!” I egged her on. “Get him! Again! Again!”
She redoubled her efforts, sending loops of pure lightning out like nooses to catch the huge creature’s wings; and I could only watch for so long without taking part.
“Why is it always the wizards who get to have all the fun?” I complained to nobody in particular, drifting closer to the near-stationary arch-fiend.
I caught Winterprince gazing at me, then he hurriedly looked away. His hands were empty of spells.
“Kaaaas,” Min moaned in a tone of warning.
“I’m perfectly safe,” I retorted over my shoulder. “Perfectly… safe…”
I watched as a druid, evidently compelled by those same instincts propelling me forwards, went roaring across the boundary of the weave. He extended his wings as he flew, shifting neatly into the gargantuan shape of a great gold-feathered eagle, his wingspan comparable with Glimmer’s when she wore her biggest condor form.
His actions were at least understandable. The statue-demon was big, but it wasn’t that big. A single sweep of the arch-druid’s reinforced talons would’ve served to decapitate any other large statue, no questions asked. His mere human hands could’ve probably accomplished it, given the magic thumping through his veins.
This was no mere statue and, whilst understandable, the druid’s excitement was regrettable.
His avian feet plunged down at the dweonatar’s neck –
Its head swung about between one moment and the next, and the light of its sun-like eyes fell square upon the descending heretic.
The chain followed its gaze. The bird-feet disintegrated, the tree-thick legs of the eagle torn to pieces as the burning whip passed clean through them.
He beat his wings, trying to halt his desperate plunge –
The flaming chain came coiling up to intercept the plummeting druid, make him a cloud of gleaming feathers –
I couldn’t permit it.
“Khi,” I rumbled in Infernal.
Right at the edge of the weave, I brought my own whips up to meet the demon’s, stretching the tendrils out to their limits.
I felt a jolt run through them as they intersected the dweonatar’s whip, but I couldn’t interpret the sensation as pain until I’d already dragged his burning chain clear, giving the wounded druid room to manoeuvre away, flap his way disconsolately back inside the shielding.
The blinding eyes turned their gaze on me, and the disdain on the demon’s face became something else:
Wonder.
“Oroz thanil,” it intoned.
I wanted to belittle the creature in response to the compliment, but the suffering of my tendril-fingers finally came screaming into my consciousness, and I was forced to scrunch my face to avoid voicing those screams –
I ripped my whips free, feeling like I’d just plunged a hand into a pot of boiling water.
Before it could react further, Hierarch Thirteen hit it square in the chest, five lances of brilliant white light that seemed to penetrate right through it, extending through its back.
Three or four times the lightning pulsed, and this time, although it tried, the dweonatar didn’t manage to shift aside. Either it had lost access to the arcane capabilities that permitted it to avoid her strikes, or she’d broken through some special defence only wizards could understand – whatever it was, her lightning seemed to home in on its location, matching its evasions with unerring accuracy.
It was seemingly bewildered, and it started trying to open portals, rings and rings of scarlet flame shooting up out of the ground all about it –
Portals we instantly expunged.
My soul swelled, even as I dangled my weird fingers, trying to keep them separated from one another so as to afford them chance to heal.
“Take it!” I roared. “Pile on. Now! Give it everything!”
The agony in my tendrils was starting to fade, dulling down to flashes of background pain. I had other forces to contribute in the meantime.
Two moments after I brought my elf-ghosts through a nethernal doorway, they were joined by a legion of flying eldritches – more than my brain could compute. Spirits and minor fiends were overshadowed by a trio of wyvarlinact, and everything wanted a piece of the dweonatar.
It was nice not to be on the receiving-end of the dismemberment this time.
When its left wing came off, severed by a lance of ice from a simple wand – that was when it tried to run.
But its motions were most definitely clumsier than before – it hadn’t just been a trick of Hierarch Thirteen’s expertise. The huge stony wing dissipated into black nothingness even as it was severed, and perhaps the loss had unbalanced it. Whatever the reason, it stumbled as we pursued it into the next street.
Then two Nightfells were on its shoulders, digging into its face with four amber-gleaming knives.
I pushed the weave forward – this time I went for its wrist, rather than its chain, as it raised its arms to bat the pair of Tanras from its upper body.
My tendril trapped the limb fast, and another array of bolts tore into the other arm, coming dangerously-close to incinerating the diviner standing there precariously atop its shoulder.
“Kill it, Kas!” one of the seeresses panted.
I tugged on my whip, testing it against the strange flesh of the arch-demon – and, slowly, the blue line bit into its stony sleeve, sending a cloud of black steam billowing forth.
The dweonatar screamed, but I quickly got the impression I couldn’t take the credit:
Its incandescent white eyes went tumbling out of its face.
In its desperate need to strike the diviners savaging it, the dweonatar ripped free of my grasp.
Tearing the whole hand clear off at the wrist.
The Nightfells were gone by the time it brought its inadequate stump up to its shoulder – instead, all five of my tendrils were fastened tight about its neck.
“Can you feel my gaze?” I snarled. “Bow! Down!”
It spun on its heel to get at me, facing the weave once more, and its motion only exacerbated the slicing-effect of my whips, increasing their bite. Its blind face was surrounded by a ruff-collar of dark droplets, its unfathomable blood venting at high-pressure from the groove I was cutting about its throat.
Spells crashed into it, over and over, and its chain fell spasmodically into the weave – once – twice –
“Submit!” I cried.
The third time its stroke fell against our shielding, the sorcerer whose faculties had permitted them to produce blades managed the feat again – a wave of azure needles snagged the burning chain, pinning it against the weave’s surface. Its presence there was still an annoyance, to be sure, but it was infinitely better than forcing the weave to weather its blows.
I pulled with my own stump, reeling in the lines, drawing the dweonatar closer – I could only blame the satyr-strength, augmented in unknown ways by the stolen power of the flagellant king. Choking, the dweonatar had no choice but to go with my motion. In desperation it dropped the chain, reaching up with its free hand and gripping my gleaming fingers instead.
A stupid move. It only served to sear its own fist, and, after a moment’s consternation, it released its hold.
I pulled its ginormous face directly into contact with the weave, and a high-pitched squeal emanated from its hollow innards, its whole head set to bubbling in the waves of our mortal might. Up this close, I could even see wrinkles and dots, imperfections in its perfect stony skin. A groove on the bridge of the nose, like the scar from a weapon-strike not yet fully healed.
“Be mine,” I purred into its blind visage.
“Oroz thanil!” it wept, its voice almost incoherent. “O… ro…”
“I’m already over it,” came a stubborn voice from behind me, sounding like a retort.
Whether he was replying to someone linked with him or arguing with himself, I couldn’t tell – but the result was the same.
I turned to watch as Winterprince reached out his arm – the long sleeve slipped back to reveal his hand and as he closed his fingers, fog rushed in to condense in his fist, forming a handle of cold blue ice.
Then his magic rippled up the shaft.
At first I thought it would be a spear – then a pike, a halberd – but within three seconds the finished shape was obvious.
The executioner’s axe was weightless in his hand yet it would’ve been fit for the grasp of a frost giant from the stories. The curved cutting-edge alone was longer than I was tall, yet its rim was honed to the keenness of a sword, glittering white like diamond.
“Head for a leg. Fair trade.” He sucked in his breath, and the steaming blade of the axe swung back. “Champions…” He seemed to struggle with it. “Champions don’t…”
I released my whips just in time for his blow to fall – he surged forwards and released the tension.
Not just the tension in his arm. He released himself. Everything.
In the instant the axe flew free, it wasn’t alone.
In this moment, he duplicated the weapon. A hundred or more of them formed, flinging themselves down into every part remaining to the dweonatar – its elbows, its wrists, its ankles, its groin – the remaining wing – the forehead, the mouth – dozens fell in at its torso alone, every angle of descent unique, every weapon pivoting with the same weight, the same determination as the one clasped in his hand.
And each one cut clean through, slicing the marble neatly, as though it were flesh.
It was flesh. The blackness inside that vented forth furiously from the wounds, spattering against the weave – that was all it had inside.
The hair on my arm and my neck stood tall as our army cried out in jubilation.
I grinned. I felt it.
I feel it.
Winterprince span to face us as the dweonatar crumbled just behind him. A whispering thread of wind pulled his hood back from his head, revealing the face of a man truly pale in complexion. He had the deep-set, smouldering eyes and heavy brows of a Northman heritage, a suspicion lent further credence by the presence of freckles across his nose. His hair was thick, grey-blond.
His intense stare came to focus on me, returning my gaze, and when he spoke it was more his tone than his words that I heard.
“Champions don’t hesitate.”
I understood; I thought I understood.
“No – we don’t, do we?”
Then I too span about, turning my back on Olbru’s killer, leaving our bitter history behind me. He’d acknowledged it all, and more. “You heard him! Champions! Let’s go!”
* * *
“Look at what she’s done,” the Nightfell at my elbow whispered, a strange twist of elation to the dismay in her voice, almost like Tanra’s sarcasm.
I agreed, with both the elation and the dismay. And there wasn’t much more to be said. The Sinphalamax didn’t build a tower of hellish obsidian, didn’t take us closer to Infernum as her eolastyr had done. No. What she’d done was so much worse. She’d truly brought the Twelve Hells to us, with horrible effectiveness.
It was eerie. We were still assuredly in Hightown, and yet as we approached what would soon become our battlefield, our killing-ground, I felt more and more as though we were leaving our native dimension behind. The horizon was occluded by the shadowy heights of lofty towers, and it finally seemed as though true night had fallen, as though the remnants of our chronomantic spells were working in reverse, serving to speed up our environment rather than slow its progress into the future.
Then we were here, in the dark place, at the very eye of the storm where the only the faintest brushes of the wind reached us. Even the sporadic crashes of the thunder and gongs of the Bells seemed to fade, lowering in volume to a background echo.
And the Fountains themselves… how much they’d changed. Even the heretics were making disconcerted noises, abandoning their links and muttering aloud to their fellows.
As rarely as I’d passed the place, the impression of the Fountains was deeply-imprinted on my mind. The jets of water, warm as summer rain all year round, arcing up fifteen feet from the eyes and mouths and hands of the various statues… The wide floors of polished, silver-grey marble, cleverly-designed grooves carrying the streams away from the short flights of stairs, causing playful waterfalls on the lower levels…
From above the zone’s layout almost resembled a ziggurat shaped like the flower of a rose, each ring of petal-terraces at any off-angle to the levels above, and extending out farther from the centre. The smallest level at the very middle held the statues of the Five, the hems of their graven robes melding without any discernible imperfection into the marble of the floor. On the floors comprising the next ring, statues depicting the gods were to be found, the primal powers like Daire and Wythyldwyn, Nentheleme and Orovon taking pride of place. On the lower terraces closest to the cobbles and paving-flags one would find trees and flower-beds of silvery stone, graven fauns and rabbits captured in fine likeness pulling endearing poses. From thousands of orifices the Fountains shot forth, coming to pool at last beneath the marble flora, where it drained and was pushed back up to the Founders and the gods above. Merizet, whoever they’d been, had certainly earned their fee on this bit of architecture.
Yet now not water but something else gushed forth, so thick as to be almost black, the metallic scent hanging thick on the air, making every inward breath revolting even to me. The unmoving denizens of the place had been warped too. The trees whose natural-seeming asymmetry had once been startling to behold were now all alike in appearance, stretched tall, all kinks in their boles straightened, branches raised like electrified hairs to the midnight skies. Blood pooled about their roots, and dripped from the cracks in the bark. Every flower was made a rose, cloaked in thorns. Prancing deer sprouted horns. Even the graven rabbits now bore fangs rather than blunted teeth.
Above, the gods were hunkered down like frightened children. Mortiforn had cast aside his scythe, crouching beside it swathed in his robe, otherwise unidentifiable, like one of the heretics. The great lion representing Kultemeren was cowering, or bowing low. Yune had sat down and pulled her skirts over her head, leaving her legs exposed, a humiliating, incensing sort of posture. Nentheleme’s glorious horn was hanging by a thread, the equine face twisted into an expression of misery, legs akimbo as if her semblance had been captured mid-fall.
In the centre, at the highest point, the towering forms of the Founders had forever stood, waving their hands in salutation of the crowds, their vaguely-elven faces smiling broadly. But these five statues hadn’t been changed like the others. They’d been physically torn free and thrown down, leaving great rents in the floor where blood geysered with all the force of an upside-down waterfall, throwing the fluid a hundred feet into the air.
Other than her, not a single demon was visible within the space, which was sizeable – the Fountains’ terraces were two hundred yards or more across in total, and the grassy grounds about the perimeter added another significant chunk to that. She was truly alone.
We couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.
She stood before the roaring crimson eruption, lit only by the lofty star-like radiance of the wizards’ spells. The Sinphalamax was, somehow, just a little skeletal thing, clad all in red. I peered at her. The shadowy pits of her eyes seemed almost to extend down the gaunt cheeks, meeting the darkness of the disturbingly-wide mouth. A shocking brand of white hair was pulled back tight at her scalp, trailing stiffly yards behind her.
The blood fell just behind her, from my perspective, showering her in its droplets as it slapped heavily at the metallic ground. I peered at her, and after a moment or two of inspection I fancied that her black lips were pulled tight in a blissful smile. Her eyes seemed to be closed – that or they were entirely lightless, displaying only an unreflective darkness throughout.
I longed for silence or speech – anything but the macabre play of blood splashing, crashing on blood… But I couldn’t link, and I brought myself to a stop, hovering at the edge of the ziggurat-floors, knowing that the others would follow my lead, halt in their place, safe inside the weave.
“What do we think?” I whispered, knowing our enemy could probably read my lips even from here, hear every solemn beat of my wraith’s-heart, never mind a hushed voice.
“Mortals.”
There was none of the eolastyr’s veneer of civility, amiability – when this entity spoke, it was a flat monotone, devoid of any vestige of respect, any notion of opposition. She was a good eighty, ninety yards from me but the word rippled out through the air, sounding like it came crackling from a thousand throats, the darkness itself lending her its innumerable voices.
“Lay down thine arms, at once.”
“Nyahaha… really…” This thing had a sense of humour, did it? I floated a little closer, mindful of the weave’s edges, my extruding energies. “Already trying to make it personal, are we? You think I haven’t heard that one before? Actually…” I muttered to those near me, “I don’t know if I have, but, well…”
“I spake not unto thee, son of Kabel, in whose blood the Summoner’s floweth true.” Her tone had changed – bitterness, almost hate, was present there now. “Thou comest here as an unwelcome wave from frost-rimmed oceans, Feychilde. I pray thee, ill-tempered tempest – rock not this boat! Casualties thou hast inflicted upon my brood. Recklessly didst thou seek to slay that which is undying, everlasting. Canst thou not make a mistake but once? Must thou persist? Imbecile! Thoughtless, heedless wind, blow aside! Thou alone shall I esteem as my confronter, and know mine enemy ere we clash.”
“You don’t half go on, do you?” I cried, trying not to cringe from the ancient enmity in her voice.
I cast about as I mustered the energy to move forwards, to check I wasn’t advancing alone, that I had the back-up I’d so desperately needed.
The other things that had leapt into my mind to say – they all dropped out of my brain like fish from a split net, left wriggling futilely all over the docks.
Every other magic-user present had acquiesced to her demand with hardly a single outward indication of resistance. They all hovered aimlessly over the edge of the blood-lake, most with their heads lowered. Even the strong-willed Netherhame, imbued with her own extra-planar faculties; even my right-hand Nightfell with all her prodigious powers. Of the lot, it was Voicenoise and those others I suspected to be the enchanters of the heretics who seemed most to struggle, their limbs jerking fitfully. But they too were wholly overcome by the spell of her voice. It didn’t matter that they didn’t literally bear arms, that their weaponry was automatic, ready on demand. The vague instruction from the arch-arch-demon was enough on its own to divest them all of their nefarious wills, their heroic purposes, their instincts for combat and killing. Even the impulse to simply survive…
I shook the nearby Tanra, yelled at her briefly.
Nothing.
I was on my own. I hadn’t even noticed the extent to which the weave had tattered, the extent to which I was overfeeding it with my energies. I’d dragged the whole thing with me when I moved, and it taxed my reserves of strength more than I could’ve imagined.
Shields are a crutch.
They might’ve been put in a stupefied state, but I could tell the others were conscious. Tanra’s eyes were heavy-lidded but still half-open. I had the impression they were all probably hearing everything.
Let their last memories of me be proud ones. Let it inspire them to fight on, when the spell is done – when the time comes.
And as I flung back my wings, propelling my eldritch body forwards with staggering speed, I didn’t try to move the forces with me. I pinched the weave rather than pulling it, allowing my momentum to reshape it, collapsing its dimensions as a smith folded steel, strengthening it.
Ismethyl – don’t fail me now!
I would leave the others defenceless. I would leave myself open to all this creature’s unreconcilable potential. I had to, because it didn’t matter otherwise. We were all doomed. If I had to be the weapon, I couldn’t hold myself back. I had to strike, and if I bent or broke in the attempt, rather sooner than later.
The handful of azure netting in my left fist – it became a point. The point of a spear, a spear of power the likes of which might not have been seen in the world since the days of the Founders. If I’d thought the force-blade I’d used on the breached shields of the Thirteen Candles was immense, it was nothing – nothing to this.
It might’ve cracked the Maginox.
I hurtled forwards, covering half the distance between us in less than a breath, and I cast down my arm, hurling humanity’s best into the face of the Sinphalamax.
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