QUARTZ 9.11: THE SINPHALAMAX
“They will tell you not to look into the darkness, for it shall make you dark. They either do not understand, or they deceive: for it is only in the darkness that the light is to be found. To look elsewhere is to invite the growth of darkness, to sacrifice that little last sliver of light in which you huddle, pretending Day has the victory even as the sun’s last rays slip over the horizon to blind you. Look up. Find the stars while evening yet lingers. Do not be blinded. The sun will always set. You will always have to find your way in the darkness. And in straying once you may stray forever.”
– from ‘The Syth Codex’, 5:209-217
As much as our enemy couldn’t see the future, neither could I.
I couldn’t fight her. Couldn’t flee her.
Whatever I attempted, I failed.
* * *
I cast down my arm, hurling humanity’s best into the face of the Sinphalamax, arresting my forwards-motion with my wings instinctively, trying to throw every last bit of conceivable force into the attack.
Then I hung there over the blood-soaked Fountains, watching, not understanding.
Why does it move so slowly?
I could see it, crashing towards her – the woven weapon was still joined to me, and I was still feeding it, but time had shifted in my enemy’s favour. The spear could only last a few seconds at most –
The black-lidded eyes of the Sinphalamax finally opened, revealing two points of bright light floating there, distinct in the deep, dark recesses, like twin full moons reflected on Northril’s waves.
She put one dainty white hand up in front of her face, then, mockingly, left it hanging there as she stepped aside, using her cupped palm to absorb the full might of the spear of power. The implication was clear; she didn’t even need to put herself in its path if she didn’t want to.
But she wanted to. She wanted to catch it. Just to show me she could.
The point struck her in the centre of the little bony palm and drove it back, about twenty feet, seemingly pinning the arch-fiend’s hand to the tiles beneath the roiling clouds of blood –
But just the one limb.
The arm simply lengthened to accommodate the change in circumstances then retracted again, even the sleeve of her red gown flowing along for the ride. The full fury of the blow expended, she was able to raise the tip of the spear up to her face, gloat in its azure radiance before it unravelled.
And unravel it did, coming apart in her hand, bubbling away into nothingness.
“Thy mettle is plain.” The night’s crackling chorus was somehow brittle; despite her obvious overwhelming advantage, the Sinphalamax sounded troubled. “Now wilt thou approach, and hear me?”
I might’ve thought myself a champion, but – what more could I do?
I hesitated.
“Come.” She beckoned with tiny white fingers. “I make no pretence, son of Kabel, as my sorely-missed Daughter might in my stead. Yet I would speak to thee, and have thee hear me clear, ere we come to further blows.”
* * *
I didn’t move. This was all so unexpected. I’d thought Doomspeaker would be here with the rest of the champions, Spirit and Mountainslide and the new girl. I’d expected to have achieved something by breaking the Thirteen Candles. Instead, I was left with this.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Play for time. Maybe she can’t keep this up for long. Maybe the others will snap out of it. Maybe Bor and the others will make it through.
I looked down at her, up to her ankles in the crimson gloop, surrounded by the statues of maimed, humiliated gods.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Thou cravest only mine ending.”
“Can you blame me? L-look at the place! It’s a – a right tip…”
“Thou art no stripling.” Her multitude-voice overrode mine and I didn’t have the confidence to use Zab’s augments. “I see thee clearer still. Now do I well-perceive how thou camest by the Low Queen’s choker. The Rings of Dismo are not for such as thee. Mayhaps the Queen hath taken a hand in thine ascension all along, mortal. Regard thyself, summoner! Behold the truth of thine overbrimming Wellspring, the fullness of thy powers, thy maximised inheritance! All that thou might bring the crown unto my hand.
“All that thou might bring thy soul unto my Master’s.”
I felt myself drifting slightly on the air, out of control, as though the unconscious entities inside me squirmed in their extra-planar dreams, wresting moments of control from my grasp.
“Thou hast so-oft yearned to be beyond the reach of a rival’s strength, longed for the invulnerability of the gods themselves. First thou didst think to find it in the safety and comfort of the circle of protection. Then thou didst scry for it in the rejection of all comfort, thinking to thereby be made harder than granite, harder than iron.”
“I don’t want to be invulnerable,” I growled. She was starting to wind me up. My vigour was coming back to me, on the heels of anger.
“Wherefore then wouldst thou set a Ring of Dismo atop thy head and avail thyself of all its dark portent? Thereby thou hast unwittingly foiled all thine attempts to thwart the forces of the Twelve Hells this night. Thou hast sacrificed one invulnerability only as thou hast accepted another, ever more-apt to despoil what thin, grease-drenched morsels of thy purity remain beneath all that power.”
“I won’t be goaded!” I cried. I could hear her hunger, and, yes, it terrified me. “What do you want…” I had to be careful how I phrased it, didn’t I? “I mean… whatever you wanted to say – speak!”
“To thee and thee alone shall I offer such a boon as this. Flee, wretch. Turn aside thy tempest; remain laden with portent and potential. Go. Be not broken further; lose not all thou hast gained. Neither one of us might leave our contest a victor, neither of us so tall as we stood beforehand; rather both shall fall, entwined, into the void of the unforeseen.”
This pragmatism – it was certainly unexpected, especially given the way she’d casually ignored a titan-slayer attack… given the way it sounded like she hated my guts.
I’d had a warning like this recently, and I didn’t heed it swiftly-enough then. Was I going to hesitate again? Was I really going to fight the Sinphalamax herself, alone?
I found myself grinning in spite of it all.
No. This time, even if it cost me my soul – I couldn’t back down now.
All those who’ve gone before me… all you champions who willingly gave it all up, your lives, your eternal spirits… Illodin, let their memories give me strength.
“No,” I said, voice quaking even on a single syllable.
I drew a deep, bloody breath, squinting at her, trying to focus my mind. But I didn’t advance. Didn’t charge her.
And she recognised it as a weakness.
“Exit this sanctum now,” she said instantly, her tone still severe. “Fly afar and farther still, pinned by the knowledge thou couldst do no more, lest thou shedst thy skin a thousand times and wail, bereft of all thou wert.”
Shed my skin…
“Yet if thou dost depart, I shall restore thine arm. All form and function will in truth return to thee. See!”
I felt the change; I looked down in amazement, and my right arm was back, even the sleeve recreated.
Awed, I pulled back on the cloth, exposing the forearm. It was like it’d never gone.
If this was an illusion, it was a damn good one. Blofm couldn’t penetrate it, even with the rose-man’s power-boost, and I could flex the fingers, clench the fist –
“Undo this!” I screamed, the gremlin-voice blaring from between my lips.
She couldn’t – I wouldn’t let her –
I can’t be like Gilaela.
“And if thou dost stay – if thou wouldst fight for their lives – then it shall only be in answer to my challenge.”
The new right hand faded both before my eyes and inside my mind, sensations drifting apart. My thrashing lines returned instantly to their place at the stump.
“Single combat, son of Kabel. Wilt thou commit thyself to such a struggle? Wilt thou bind of thyself and thy magic to the deed?”
If she can rob me of my tendrils – what am I going to do? Is a force-sword really going to cut it, here? I bet I don’t even have an eldritch that can touch her…
I swallowed. “You’d destroy me in ten seconds flat.”
“And yet I should abstain from killing those lesser lambs, from annihilating thy flock. Thou hast it all, all I sought and seek. I shall remove myself from thy city, shouldst thou fall to my blows.”
I stared, and stared, not fully comprehending. It was one hell of an offer. But, surely she was capable of forcing a single combat – it was hardly as though I could break the others from the reverie into which a simple command from her had plunged them. She could just put them back under even if I managed it. If I wouldn’t flee – how else would I fight her, but alone?
No – there had to be something more to it. There was some limitation to the spell she’d used to enthral my army.
What exactly was she asking again?
“You want me to – promise not to involve others?”
“The twain of us shall engage in sacrosanct conflict; I shall endeavour to claim thy head, and before the Hubbub-Gate of Lamentation, at the foot of the holy Obelisk of Salt upon a pike six score spans tall shall I set it! An unending, ever-screaming testament to thy failure. Yet thou shalt dwell no longer within the sorry, shrieking skull; that shall be some lesser soul’s honour. Thy spirit shall be shriven, given unto my Master in offering. These are all my terms. Now – how sayest thou?”
Something clicked in my head.
Why else would she insist I fight her alone?
“I say, you’re tricky, aren’t you? You’re trying to make me scared.”
“Wherein do I miss the mark?”
“You aren’t even as scary as ten things I could name, and half of ‘em on the list would just be people. Oh, dear. I think I get it now. If you fight me – they wake up, don’t they?”
The little, dead-looking girl – the Sinphalamax – straightened perceptibly.
For all I knew, the woven spear would’ve utterly annihilated her if I’d tried to save it until she attacked.
“You want me to have to stop them from helping me, or forfeit. Forfeit what? My magic? And you can promise you’ll leave Mund all you want – it might even be true. But your Daughters? Your legions? You’d give them free rein, wouldn’t you? You didn’t say anything about them. No… no. For all your talk of your own invulnerability… you really aren’t. You can’t command a cease to hostilities while you’re being hostile, can you?
“You must be petrified.”
She hissed, and the blood fountaining up behind her gushed with more force, pushing higher, falling farther, covering her in its deluge.
She vanished into it.
“Come, then!” the night snapped. “Forget my terms and have at me, wretch. I shall dispel all those abortive futures, those destinies which harboured thy presence, ere they crawleth forth to clutch at existence.”
I didn’t move, and started casually building a shield about myself.
“You waited a million years. What’s a few minutes?” I looked at the dark fountain with what I hoped looked like an amused smile on my face. “You’re just trying to draw me on, or trying to make me run. I think I’ll sit tight, thanks. Looks awfully Infernum-y inside that blood, you realise.”
“A million years.” The blackness seemed to sneer. “Unto the paltry mind of a mortal, such must seem aeons beyond imagining, years which to me comprise but a season of the World’s turning. Thou canst not dream the Shadow. Thou art but a plaything of the Mist’s amusement, mine to make and break and discard again. I am that of which thy lore knows naught but its degree: thirty-third, as thou shouldst have it. What might one such as thee understand about the Sinphalamax?”
“Well, there’s a few things.”
The amused sneer continued, almost curious: “Such as.”
“Sinphalamax. That’s your breed, right?”
I could sense the change in her mood by the fact an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming.
“Haha… yeah, sure it is. Four syllables. It’s weird, the magic of names, isn’t it? Oh, pardon me. I don’t think we’ve actually been formally introduced… Well,” I straightened, glancing back at my army once more, “since none of my distinguished fellows seems disposed to speak for me, and you’ve apparently completely missed your plus-one – I’m Kastyr. Not ‘son of Kabel’ – Kas among friends. That’s us, right? Good ol’ chums, I can just tell. Say, I think I missed your name. Were you invited? Give it again, eh?”
“Kas. I know thou hast a tendency to blabber as a knee-high brat when perchance thou art nervous, and thou hast come somehow by the impression it shows thee the braver. It does not. It only exposes thy true weakness. Thine ego. As precious as her eggs to a mother-hen, and every bit as fragile. Shall I speak on thy flight from the city? Of the abandonment felt by those left behind, those lost, those perished on far-flung sands whose lives thou couldst have, shouldst have, wouldst have saved, if only for the cowardice which betrayed thine every choice? Oh –“
“Oh, now who’s the blabbering baby? At least I’ve got the excuse I’m kind of hoping your spell’s going to start slipping. I don’t think you’re the type to play for time while back up comes rushing to your aid, are you?”
“Nay; I do not require reinforcements. My Daughters collect the beast-men in mimicry of mine own court; all the same, what you call eolastyr is far, far closer in stature to obbolomin than to the Sinphalamax. There is naught any other might do for me that I might not accomplish for myself, faster. More brutally.”
Lies!
It had to be.
“Yet thou hast failed to acknowledge my point, and therein is nestled deeply thy wounded core, thy glass-like soul, clenched so tight that the cracks run throughout, permitting only the darkness to seep in. The countless changes thou might have wrought in thy time here! To avert the destruction of thy home –“
“You and your machinations destroyed my home! You!”
“No, not I. Not me or mine. The Magisterium’s failings annihilated Mud Lane, Kassy, my good ol’ chum, my little fella.”
The night was suddenly speaking in my mother’s voice.
I almost lost control of all my powers for an instant, lost control of all my joined eldritches, all my hidden legions…
How? How was she doing this?
“You could have stopped the inkatra, Kassy. You failed. You failed to realise your true purpose. I wish I could say I wasn’t disappointed. Even now, after everything – if I should ask after thy greatest regret, thou shalt misspeak in reply. Thy thoughtless slaughter of the Ysga-vin? Which slaughter comes first to mind? Thy hand in the removal of Telior from all the maps of the world? No. Thy true failures remaineth here, son of Kabel. Son of Ninadra.”
I shivered, in spite of all my protections, all my protestations.
“A score of scores, counted a thousand times – this many lives hast thou chosen to abandon. The suffering of nigh half a million souls hath resounded across the halls of mine abode, each of them bound by this sole truth: that thou wert to guard them against their own evils, and that thou didst leave them, to tend thine own precious fate. The people thou durst call countrymen. Sticktowners. Thine own kin and folk. Left to rot. Left to wither. Left to burn in the same cinders, the spit I would see roast thee! Didst thou tend that garden well, see fate fed and watered, show destiny’s face unto the sun? Nay! Thou didst shower it in darkness, kept it in the cold, in the ice-heart of thy world!”
Then the night, the Sinphalamax, roared:
“Now! It is not in my nature to abide long! Bend, or suffer!”
The air had no odour other than blood, but that didn’t bother me anymore. I drew a deep breath through my nose, then let it out.
“I faced the avatar of Vaahn. You don’t scare me, little girl. Why, what are you gonna do if I don’t do what you ask? Burn my city down… extra?“
“There are levels of destruction to which only the true heretic hath become accustomed. If thou wouldst contest my spot – I shall move aside, contrite. As the fences and canals of thy Treetown, so the walls of thy city; I am a hunter unparalleled, and I will cull thy miserable populace to the bone ere I whittle into exposed marrow.”
“Fine. If you go, I guess I’ll just follow. Daddy will follow to keep an eye on you at a nice, safe distance. Once you’ve done a naughty, I’ll –”
“Ever hast thou thought of death as an enemy. Ever hast thou feared it. It is the mark of the child to reject the unknown. Thou knowest not death, yet thou wouldst seek to judge it, as a man!”
That was it. The final straw, just as I locked Shield Seven’s constellations in place.
“Let’s catch up, shall we, Kassy? Then we’ll play.”
She loosed a portion of her potential, and it obliterated me.
Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong-Gong!-
I reeled – I couldn’t –
GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG-GONG!-
– even think –
– and yet I watched as the fountains of blood coalesced, somehow flowing backwards, down at their origin point, the hundred-foot geyser shrinking in less than the lifespan of a blink –
Every droplet coursing into the living-dead girl.
She was crouching now right beside the riven flooring. Her gown shuddered as it silently expanded by orders of magnitude, spreading rapidly across the surface of blood-pool, sliding up the outcroppings of silver-grey marble…
Enclosing the blasphemous statues of the gods within the bright-red fabric, where they suddenly came to life, twisting and contorting beneath the covering.
Inside the gown of the Sinphalamax, Mortiforn got to his feet, the bright-red scythe now in his hand.
Nentheleme fell and rose again, far taller and broader than Gilaela, a triad of horns sprouting at her brow.
Chagrin flooding me, I backed away a few paces through the air – but even as I turned I knew I was too slow, that the lethargy would be the death of me –
Her gown outpaced me, covering the landscape beneath me, all the way to the edge of the Fountains.
Graven trees stirred, branches flailing. Fanged rabbits raised textureless fabric eyes to stare up at the flock of dazed champions and heretics floating above them.
Yet that was not the worst. I only understood it as I saw them come streaking in from the north-west, heading to their Mother’s side across the bright red lake which undulated beneath them. Two of them were now bearing sacks of tumbling archmages, dragging their spoils behind them.
She tricked me. She made me think I was safe to wait – and now –
She was playing for time all along.
“Mother!” cried one of the eolastyr, and the others joined in, crooning in one blended voice. It was a wail of despair. “Mother, slay him!”
“Where is thy Sister? Where is the Second of ye?” The night’s hiss became a roar. “I cannot see her – where is she?”
“He slew her!” The eolastyr bearing the most bodies in her crimson-glittering bag raised her empty paw, indicating me with a single claw extended. “He slew again of us, Mother!”
The Sinphalamax closed her eyes, and trembled. Her hollow voice rang from every statue’s mouth, from every patch of darkness.
“This is where we strike the blow that shall break the city. The Ring of Dismo. Bring it to me, and let it be done.”
For all that they knew I could kill them, they reacted without delay to their Mother’s command, hurling their kidnapped archmages to the hell-cloth lake and summoning a multitude of gateways.
They were too far away for me to quash many of their portals; I clenched the seams tight before they opened, wherever I could lay my mind on them, but only those clustered about me were slammed shut in time. Dozens of planar doorways opened at the centre of the Fountains. And, while I wasted time, the Sinphalamax approached the bags, the infernal webbing bulging with insensate masters of magic – the little demigod was peeling back the outer layers of crimson shielding to peer within at the gifts her children had fetched for her.
But she’s still scared to face me herself. Scared to engage when she isn’t guaranteed the win. Scared to loose my army upon herself.
The eolastyr weren’t wasting their time with first-rank demonoids anymore. It was a host of heavies that came out to greet me, bintaborax and ikistadreng and mekkustremin flanked by slouching thastubabil, bounding epheldegrim, snarling vamelgarit. The flying fiends amongst them weren’t imps or folkababil or hovering eyeballs – many of these things were new to me, but some I’d read about, like the pedheliorph void-birds, or were those I’d seen once or twice before, such as the wyvarlinact, the steely things which were supposedly the progenitors of our world’s wyverns… And then there were the winged snarling plants I thought were known as terminion, and garphalaba, the freely-floating spirals of dissected body-parts exuding an aura of death visible to me even from here…
I opened my own portals in answer. I could bring through hundreds of eldritches at once now, and I availed myself of my new capabilities, ushering a true legion of undead and demons onto the trembling pool. Those most expendable I thrust to the fore, gaggles of imps and overgrown insects surging forward, expelled forcefully from my gateways to spread across the red cloth.
Red cloth which treated my eldritches in a completely different way, reacting to their presence atop it with a violence belied by its previous passivity when the eolastyr’s forces entered the scene.
Every one of my minions that set foot or hoof to the fabric was covered toe-to-head in an instant, wrapped up, enclosed by my enemy’s will. Hundreds of elven wights and powerful fiends. My old reliable mekkustremin was trapped inside the cloth, every dark tangle of fake hair atop its doll’s head now coated in red.
Of all my grounded host, only two fought for freedom – Khikiriaz, about whose gleaming legs the red gown tried to fasten itself without any apparent success, the black antlers of the ikistadreng capable of snicking through the loops of thread winding about them; and my new thinfinaran, his armour’s absorbent qualities sufficient to protect him.
The eolastyr were still opening gateways and many of their slaves were summoners too. I’d never seen anything like it. The obscene amount of blood they’d managed to gather up was greasing the wheels of Infernum, the number of fiends growing exponentially.
But I was lost for a moment, regarding my own eldritches, aghast.
I tried, waving my arm furiously – once – twice –
I couldn’t dispel them, remove them from the plane. Their loyalty had been stolen – even the thinfinaran’s.
Even the unswerving devotion of Khikiriaz was no longer mine to command.
Then, seeing a huge portion of my host turn to face me with malign expressions beneath their bright-red masks, malign demeanour in their cloth-bound limbs –
Oh well. I was already eyebrow deep in the drop anyway. What’s a few extra tons on top?
I waved to my ascended ancients, joining with the strongest of them, and I moved in without holding anything back.
* * *
The air was teeming with foes. Too many for me to kill. My shields absorbed a hundred different magical effects and withered, withered, withered.
I tried to drop in on top of the Sinphalamax before she did whatever she was planning to do with the slumbering archmages under her power. I tried my hardest to fight her, and force her to fight… I really did. But it was futile. Where there weren’t a dozen demons, half ranked in the double-digits, there were dozens of them. When I reached the spot in which the captives had been hurled down, never mind the Sinphalamax – I didn’t even get to see the eolastyr. Just their pets. The horde intercepted my moves, their blows strong enough when massed together to push and throw me, propelling me back and forth, bouncing me about inside the frayed circle-shield.
A pedheliorph’s scream dissolved one of my ancients before the others clambered atop it, three of them tearing off its wings. I didn’t see it, but I felt it as Oldbeard and Bilgebreath were consumed in the conflagration of a dying finthrilikar. My fullness, the weight of my eldritches in my sorcerous stomach, suddenly dropped away precariously as score upon score of my imps were eradicated.
Terminion descended at me, heads like huge flower-buds unfurling, layers of dropping red petals expanding around my shields. Their vegetation-wings were diaphanous, delicate creations, see-through but for the red veins running throughout their substance; nonetheless, they were as tough as bintaborax-flesh, dulling my blades as I tried to send them tumbling, fighting to maintain my own altitude. It was hopeless. Scores of them swept down on me, compressing me, wedging me against the grounded demons. My cloth-garbed thinfinaran was there, over half consumed by the red gown now; I struck him down, then turned to see a wave of giantesses charge me, amethyst-pulsing blades plunging up at me.
There was a vamelbabil amongst the vamelgarit, spinning and swinging with a coordination even my satyrs might’ve envied, evading the blades upon my circle without much fuss. Fifteen feet tall, she towered over even her brethren, her sparkling sapphire sword truly something to behold.
Truly something to hold, too; however good her reflexes, mine were better. One of my fingers took it from her – the hand first, of course – and when I knotted my tendril about the hilts and pommel it retained its shape and solidity, for a time at least.
The vamelbabil’s lesser cousins couldn’t see the whips that slew them, it appeared, but they could certainly see the sword as it lopped its former wielder into great steaming chunks.
With her gone, the resistance against my shields wavered and then, in the next instant, evaporated. The winged terminion gave way; I pressed forwards and upwards and suddenly I was grinding through them again, defended on the flanks by silent, relentless spirits even the demons had cause to fear.
I just had to hold on – a few more seconds – and I’d be through them – out the rear of the horde, where she had to have fled…
It didn’t matter; it was too late. The reason for the absence of the eolastyr was made plain. Whatever the Sinphalamax said aloud about wanting them to take the ‘Ring of Dismo’ from me, she’d lied. They’d had another task. Through the massed ranks I caught glimpses of them, leaping through the air with newly-made sacks in tow, heading towards their Mother, circling the battle without once coming close to my striking-range.
Sacks big enough to tow houses, expanded to capture the heretic-druids whose forms were too large to fit within the old containers. Rag-draped or fur-covered bodies tumbled through the spheres, flopping and rolling like stunned shrimp, slamming into one another without response.
I’d broken the Thirteen Candles, playing right into their hands. All I’d achieved was to do the demons’ work for them, present them with a fine meal.
Had the crown betrayed me?
Ahead of me, somewhere, red and white lights were flashing. A warning unlike any other.
She’s taking them.
Mr. Cuddlesticks loomed before me, a hill of fabric-wrapped spikes with arms raised back, high over his head.
My ascended ancients tried to stop him, but I knew what was coming. I had just enough warning to fix one last link on the star within my circle before he struck me down with his hammer.
The wrapping of red fabric might’ve served to soften the blow slightly, robbing the weapon of its fiery enhancements; but it was still as heavy as a mammoth. The bintaborax crushed me into the fabric, which cratered to accommodate my shield, then undulated, throwing me back up –
Mr. Cuddlesticks snarled as my spirits sank their life-draining fingers into his metal muscles, aiming another blow at me, heedless –
“Inxarioxus!” I gasped, calling his name aloud, uncaring. “Agar! Agar!”
It was pointless. I couldn’t stop him, no matter what.
The statue of Mortiforn appeared at my side, sweeping its scythe down at my torso. In spite of its new red skin, the blade atop the tool looked no less sharp than it had before its transformation. My ascended ancients were on the statue immediately, ripping the nightmarish elemental apart without a moment’s notice, re-exposing the silver-speckled marble still lurking beneath the Sinphalamax’s fabric. But Daire swept in on the other side, the goddess reaching for me with red-gloved arms –
Red-feathered Orovon brought a taloned foot down into my barrier – Mr. Cuddlesticks slammed into me with all his weight –
Mortiforn, I prayed, accept this offering.
I let go of the shield, and dropped the bonds that kept my ancients close to me. If I was going to die – if I was going to do this, she could have her single combat, have it her way.
I moved through my strongest bintaborax, and I dragged the blade of the vamelbabil after me, tearing it straight through his chest.
I didn’t know whether he could survive such an experience – not that I should’ve cared. But I had little choice, if I wanted to use the sapphire sword before it bubbled away.
And, oh, I wanted to use it.
I swung. Again and again and again and again and again. I barrelled through all intervening obstacles. Stone and metal. Flesh and bone. Corrupt vegetation-material. All their jagged weapons, all their bolts of hell-fire penetrating me, even as I penetrated their wielders. I diced through a dozen demons a second and they couldn’t stop me, couldn’t impede me, couldn’t throw me back anymore. Every time they tried, their body-parts died, withering, withering, withering.
Every time they tried, a part of my power died too. It was simple-enough to be a wraith in day-to-day life; it was simple-enough to take the ghost of a dark elf inside yourself and slide into the chest-cavity of a defeated dracolich. Sliding through a throng of hostile, puissant entities? Even with the augmented ascended ancients within me, I suffered. The animosity of the Twelve Hells lashed me. Every motion sapped my strength. Every yard accomplished was a yard closer to death.
Something wedged a claw into my neck that found purchase despite my barely-real state. I slaughtered it, of course, barely even looking as I raked two whips along my side; but the claw remained, and in pulling it loose I started to lose blood – as slowly as it seeped from the wound, it was happening. It had started. How long I had left, I wasn’t entirely sure.
A wyvarlinact blocked my path, a dozen smaller fiends clinging to it, bathing me in unholy fire – I was beginning to tire as I laid about myself, trying to force a way through –
“Master,” Khikiriaz huffed, barrelling in from my left and stomping the wyvarlinact into lumps of twisted metal. The red cloth was still trying to work its way up my ikistadreng’s legs and he wasn’t discernibly mine – yet he still fought the good fight.
“Salik kasena!” I gasped back at him. “Khalor! Khalor!”
I emerged on the other side of the host in a shower of dismembered fiendish limbs, rolling through the air near the broken pieces of Litenwelt Kordaine, trying to right myself with my wings. For whatever reason, the power of the Sinphalamax hadn’t extended over the shattered remnants of the Five Founders; they’d been left, laying low as mere debris shaking atop the rippling gown’s fabric. The graven face of the Summoner, my forefather, stared blankly at me from beneath the brim of his pointy hat.
Give me your strength, grandfather.
I looked up at the Weaver of Woe and her trio of eolastyr, reorienting myself, on the cusp of the final mad dash –
And I saw as she completed the spell, disintegrating the first sack of archmages. The red and white lights weren’t emanating from her – they were being generated inside, the effect seeming to be fully contained by the glittering crimson folds of the bag.
Too late. There was nothing more to be said for it: I saw them fade away to nothingness, catching just a final glimpse of the brave archmages who’d become the first afternoon snack of the Sinphalamax.
Wanderfox. Petalclaw. Wilderweird.
Starsight.
Star.
I couldn’t grieve, not properly – not now. I still hadn’t even started to process Emrelet’s death.
The Sinphalamax turned the white points of her eyes upon me, and put up her hand, halting the sea of demons flooding up behind me over the decaying corpses of their cousins.
“You see them, Kassy.” She spoke in my mother’s voice again, and it was all the more chilling now that I could see her up close, her depraved appearance not so far from human that her choice of a child’s guise was unaffecting. It reminded me of Jaid instantly. “You see what you let happen, to your friends. Hell couldn’t have come – not like this – if you hadn’t gone.”
She spread her hands over the four remaining infernal sacks, gloating, the black maw gaping disturbingly. I couldn’t make everyone out, but in the smallest one I could see Spirit, spread-eagled, draped atop Mountainslide’s back –
I was hovering just off the ground, the silent hosts behind me awaiting only a signal to fall upon me, tax my reserves, tap away at my magic until nothing was left to run my body. Then I too would be taken – I would lie there, like that, draped like a torn old coat on the arm of a chair, ready to be disposed of –
A whimper of terror, pure unfiltered doubt, escaped my lips.
And a voice arose within me, unbidden, laden with a hideous kind of certainty:
No. She’s wrong. If you hadn’t gone, you would never have been able to throw hell back once it arrived. You are everything you needed to be and more.
Jaid? Jaroan?
Who are you?
“Yune save us,” I whispered.
“The Architect of All Disappointment shall not sway me,” the Sinphalamax crackled. “Cast up thy prayers to Celestium all thou wouldst. This day is not her day.”
I looked down at my tendrils.
Yune’s fingers.
“Dispose of the magisters,” she went on. “I shall watch young Feychilde watch.”
The three eolastyr slid out of my field of view and at first I didn’t comprehend – ‘dispose of the magisters’, that had been her command, yet the tigresses were bounding away from the sacks…
Then I turned my head to the left, and I understood. I couldn’t hear the magisters approaching; their illusionists were good enough to trap the sounds they were making. However, to my goblin-eyes they were revealed as strobing shapes, completely ruining their invisibility; and I had little doubt the arch-fiends could see right through to the contents of their stomachs – not just today’s breakfast, but yesterday’s, and tomorrow’s.
A tomorrow that would, for these men and women, never come. The distraction was going to be minimal. Almost a hundred magisters had been sent – whether arch-magisters were present, I had no notion, but every single mage was flying. They came in from the east like a cloud, prepared for battle in a formation comprised of six or seven neat lines, waves that would strike the enemy one after another. Every single magister gripped a wand. There was no weave hanging in the air about them, but a smattering of shields suggested the presence of at least one arch-sorcerer.
Not handless Valorin, that was for sure.
I went to turn back to the Sinphalamax, wanting to use this opportunity –
“Another ninety-four deaths to be laid at your feet, Kassy,” Mother said with a sigh. “Look. They only came to help you. And… just look.”
Her words were pointless. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sight. Although distant, the cracks! reverberated through my wraith-flesh – not because I could feel their magic working upon me, but purely because I could remember the sensation. I could imagine what was happening to the poor mages who’d been unlucky-enough to get called up for this job today.
These magisters weren’t butchering children. They’d courageously lined up to assault the very eye of the storm itself. Who knew what kind of planning and cajoling went into putting this force together, what level of frayed emotions they were each enduring…
They brought with them nothing, absolutely nothing capable of stopping the eolastyr – especially not three of them gathered together like this. The tiger-women battered through shields like the orbs were made of blue glass, cracking the azure eggs and flinging the contents about, innards pouring out everywhere – the flensing effect of their whips was horrible, absolutely horrible to behold at a distance. Great strips of meat went sloughing away across the grass beyond the red-covered Fountains – there was too much of the stuff for the eolastyr-weapons to handle.
Even from here I could hear the rattle of the bony remnants that fell to the ground, a delicate pitter-patter made all the more macabre by the fact I knew some of those poor people might well have been still alive, at least for the moment.
“How disappointing,” the Sinphalamax commented.
Only two or three seconds of screeching, rending sounds gave warning –
Boom-doom-boom-doom-DOOM-DOOM-SKRANGGGG!
I twisted my head, looking to my right, satyr-reflexes causing me to wave the wings, pushing myself away from the breaking-point of the earthquake –
A gleaming metal rod came bursting through the blood-pool, then more and more, shearing effortlessly through the sheet of red cloth, reaching up like an inverted lightning-bolt, a silver tree.
Arranged upon its various forks and hook-like protuberances, a dweonatar was splayed, crucified by cords of living, pulsing iron. The molten metal had worked its way through the huge demon’s innards, spearing like drill-bits through a hundred orifices that weren’t there before. Each wound leaked gallons of darkness. The palms of the outstretched arms and the crown of the head in particular vented the stuff as though there were no end to it.
The marble arch-fiend was flickering, twisting its head; its eyes were thrown wide, but the light was dim, dim –
Upon its chest, rocking with its every rapid motion, grey-clad Ironvine was crouched.
The champion’s chain-masked face tilted towards me; she was taking in the situation, I realised. The Sinphalamax. The eolastyr. The legions. The captive archmages. All of it within twenty yards of her.
“It came here to die,” she snarled.
Then the wizard straightened up, one hand pointing to the sky –
And the celestial lightning answered, from beyond the storm, beyond Mekesta and all her powers.
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