QUARTZ 9.2: CONSEQUENCES
“Wherefore this ambrosial nightmare we call material existence? We stand knee-high in Nothingness, drinking deep its fumes, and if we purpose to stride off through the gloom we will find only Nowhere on our horizon. Is this it? Is this all you made yourself to be? Naught but will can bend this course, avert this crash! Do you remember how to will? Even now you cannot understand me. You can only drink deep.”
– from ‘A Treatise for Existence’, ch. 3
Ragged wails, like a thousand shrill whistles. Tortured pleas in a language I could no longer comprehend, no longer care to. I heard it, drank it in, and it was neither sweet nor bitter. The mortal elves of the Materium were no match for the ascended ancients I’d made of their slain peers. I heard their lamentations, standing there bound to the post, and I did nothing. Precisely nothing.
I felt satyr-strength return, and the yawning emptiness of the wraith – yet I didn’t avail myself of them. I simply waited for my turn. I would go last, I imagined.
The annihilation, obliteration of this expeditionary force surrounded me, and for a moment I was concerned, knowing that they should’ve been fighting back – if it were so simple for a single arch-sorcerer to reduce the dark elven forces to wet smears, they never would’ve taken me aboard.
Yet it happened.
Their own magic-users must’ve put up paltry defences. My forces swarmed from deck to deck, streaming through the air between the bone ships, and I could sense the way they moved unimpeded almost anywhere they sought to go. Once or twice, there was the suggestion of resistance – perhaps a sorcerer’s shields, or a druid’s endurance. But these were momentary blips. The dark elves who tried to struggle soon fell still with the rest. They had more magic in their blood than men, but they were not all magicians. They toppled under the torrent of my power.
And then my concern fell away too, as silence came, returning the crashing of the waves to my consciousness.
What does it matter, really, if they all just gave up and died? Isn’t it right? Isn’t it natural?
He said it himself. Northril claims it all, in the end.
I looked down at the corpse of the captain, twenty feet away. His remains were lying almost spread-eagled, but the torso was folded in half where nethernal fingers had penetrated flesh to tear out eighteen inches of the spine.
As for the elf himself – he floated above his body, staring imploringly at me.
I didn’t even have to command him. The moment my eyes met his he looked away, the burning magenta gaze dropping in desolation.
None of them were moving. They were all waiting for me. My power covered all the ships.
Come, Northril. Claim me too.
One of my active ghosts appeared before me and I winced despite my resolve, waiting for the killing-blow.
But she arrived only to unbind me, sliding on nethernal wind into my eyeline. She bent to complete her task, severing the straps that fastened me to my post.
But I never asked – never requested freedom…
I studied her instead of the captain. She would’ve been beautiful, elegant, once – now she was just a sliver of silver-white light like the rest of them, the only purple in her seeping out from beneath her eyelids, from between her lips. I couldn’t remember her corpse, but I’d left that floating at sea, slicing away and stealing only what was most important to her – the soul.
I took… their… souls…
I emptied my stomach, right then and there, tasting again the swamp-water out of which Avvie had hauled me – it poured out of me, the brackish, noxious substance, spraying right through my eldritch.
She gave no outward sign of alarm. Her fingers became corporeal as they sheared through the last of the material binding me to the post, and I staggered, the left foot giving out.
Rising, the dark elf’s ghost turned away and flitted off once more.
Where is she going? What did I do? Why did I…
“Better we all die. Let not one thing live. Let it be over.”
But I hadn’t let it be over. I hadn’t let it end. Something in me had compelled me to reverse my mistake, saving me from committing an incomparable sin. Somehow, I knew the twins were safe.
There’s still some good left in you, Kas? I said to myself sarcastically. Just enough good for it to be a curse rather than a blessing. Just enough, that I might see myself for what I am. What I’ve become. What I’ve done!
No! It doesn’t matter how much darkness there is – until it’s extinguished, a candle still sheds a light. You need only a single flame by which to watch your footfalls and it’ll all fall into place. You just have to watch. Mind your step, and the candle. Cup the flame, if you have to. Or have it cupped for you. It’s not against the rules to let other people in. You did what you warned Tanra against. You let it consume you. You just… pulled the twins along for the ride.
Now they’re driving. You’re not to blame. If anything, everything you’ve done, everything you’ve shown them – it’s helped. Really, it has.
I heard myself, felt my attitudes subtly changing. I was speaking to myself in the inner voice of certitude and it was impossible not to listen.
Now they’re driving?
I had no idea what I meant, but I had a vision of them, holding the reins of a wagon, leading the horses over the edge of a cliff.
“Jaid?” I croaked. My mouth felt better now, Sin-Aidre’s spell fading despite my reluctance to call on the wraith-form. “Jaroan?”
I tried to move my right arm, and the flaccid lines of force connected to the space occupied by my phantom limb stirred listlessly.
I tried again – the left accepted my commands. The left was still present, ready for action.
I moved the back of my hand to my mouth, wiped away the remnants of the vomit and drool from my chin, and raised my eyes.
Telior was almost gone. The city was like a beetle crushed against the rocks, much of its wooden carapace now floating atop the waves. Ninety-nine percent of its lights were extinguished, and it lay there in the greyness, dying on the sea, the stone. I could see people in the debris – only some were trying to swim. Many had already perished – just how many, I couldn’t tell from here. I fancied I could pick out the interiors of buildings where walls had fallen away, pick out citizens clinging to loose-hanging walkways and bridges.
Few more were likely to die than had already. I had more pressing needs right now.
“Jaid?” I cried, uncertainty returning. “Jaroan?”
I couldn’t move to seek them out. If I’d been able to hear their screams, surely now they could hear me, if they were really alright – and they could reply –
If my minions had killed them – if their ghosts were waiting for me below-deck, my senses blind to such heartbreak – I would snap all over again. I knew it – I would turn my weapons on what remained of the Telese out of spite, then on myself, and I would go last into the shadowland, at the back of the host, whipping them all onwards –
Then they were there, stepping out of the shadows, gold hair glinting.
I almost collapsed in relief. It was too good to be true – this had to be some spell, an illusion…
But I knew it wasn’t. They were okay.
I watched them as they crossed from the recess of a cabin’s doorway, making their way across the deck towards me. They were holding hands and, despite the body-strewn path they followed, neither of them went in the lead to step over the corpses. They walked in unison, each raising the right foot simultaneously, the left…
Satyr-reflexes screamed, in spite of all the reassurances I gave myself.
They never moved in perfect timing like that – no one did, unless they were being puppeteered by an enchanter. Such a sight cried out that there was something abhorrent happening, something missing in them. Even before they spoke, I could tell something was horribly, horribly wrong.
Not wrong, dear brother.
No, not wrong.
Right.
Incredibly, indescribably right.
Jaid? Jar?
It’s us.
In the flesh.
And the rest.
“You…” They were only fifteen feet from me but they’d never looked farther away. I clung to my post, aghast, the left arm reeling me in until I was pressing the timber against the side of my face. “You’re the… enchanters.”
“We guess it had to happen eventually,” they said, the same words, same inflections tripping off their tongues. “Oh… oh Kas… What’s been done to you?”
“I…” I looked around at the quiet crowd of ghosts watching on. “I did something. Something… bad.”
“We’re the ones who let you know,” they echoed one another without there even being an echo – the timing of every syllable, it was perfect…
“Can’t you stop doing that?” I asked, cringing.
“Doing what?”
I realised they were teasing me, but I couldn’t help myself. “Talking – together!” I moaned, gesturing furiously with my phantom limb – the azure lines contorted dangerously.
They looked at each other.
“Stop it,” they said in unison.
“No, you stop it,” they said again.
I stared.
“Come on, you’re worrying our brother,” they chided each other. Then a devilish ingenuity lit their features in tandem. “If you stop copying me, we can have a –”
“– cheese –” said Jaid –
“– ham –” said Jaroan –
“– butty for lunch,” they finished.
They both looked back at me, rueful expressions on their faces.
“We can’t do it,” they said, in equally-carefree voices.
I stared at them a second longer.
“Cheese… and ham.” I couldn’t help but crack a smile. They’d been speaking so quickly and confidently, it was tough to pick out the different words. “You’ve seemed so… estranged. At least, since…”
“Zyger,” they supplied.
Hearing the word in that doubled voice made me shiver.
“Yes…” I gazed at them, still trying not to reel. There was too much to take in. “You’re still… different, in there? You still… want different food?”
They shrugged, the same nonchalant little shoulder-roll.
“You… you’re in my world now.” It all came crashing down on me in an instant, but, somehow, I didn’t stagger under its weight. “You’re c-cursed…”
“Not cursed, dear brother. Blessed.”
I shook my head vehemently. “That’s just how it looks –”
“We’ve seen it from your side. You’ve just forgotten how to see it from ours. Here, have a look.”
They were surrounded by ghosts and corpses but they were smiling.
Why are they smiling?
It’s not glee, dear brother. It’s not about exuberance. It’s not something to enjoy. You remember it. Smiling. Truly smiling. Not the idiot thing you put on your face when something funny happens. You do it when the world is worse. You do it to make it better.
Smiling when I used zombies to lock people in coffins and bury them.
(Not quite right.)
Smiling when I saw my acquaintances die, when I used it as fuel to bring the fight, bring the death back down on the death-dealers.
Yes… I remember it.
If you’d smiled at Mal Malas…
What? You think I could’ve fought him?
Why not?
His power! He –
Did you try?
It’s impossible!
Get them to tie you back to the post, then, if you’re only going to attempt the possible. The world doesn’t need the likes of you.
My mouth fell agape a little, to hear, to feel such chiding from them.
My kid brother and sister, now –
Now ascended ancients, haha, yes.
You can’t! I couldn’t contain my shock. You can’t… be like this! You can’t control people!
We know. We won’t. Our changes will be subtle –
No…
Yes. The response was final, implacable, and my resistance melted like an icicle in a hot bath. We understand that there are limits. We’ll allow everyone their own thoughts. That’s the best thing about this, Kas. We’ve grown – perhaps not towards the light, always, but we have grown.
No! I cried it this time. It’s not enough!
We’re not stupid. We’ll do this thing as right as we can and even if we can’t just be your moral compass, we can set your feet straight if you stray from the path you’ve chosen.
And we can defend you. That amulet you got from Herreld – you can help us make another. Borasir won’t be able to touch you again.
The idea filled me –
Returning to Mund, not as a vagabond, but as a force of irresistible will. Bringing change – real, positive change.
No boundaries. No barriers. Just concept, and execution.
How much of this is you?
We’re just letting you be yourself. That so rarely happens to people.
I looked about at the dead dark elves, glanced at the dead Telese.
It’s all my fault, though.
Not yours.
Whose, then? The dark elves? I didn’t have to kill them.
No, you didn’t. But you didn’t. Not really. It’s the wraith.
I looked down at the deck, knowing my own truth as much as they surely now did:
I don’t want to give it up.
Then don’t.
I looked up at them.
You’ll let me keep it?
We can barricade it, easily. Plus, you’ll probably need it. Your roster of allies grows exceedingly thin, dear brother.
I realise…
Emrelet left you.
Yes. Sort of…
She did. She trusted others more than she trusted you. She wouldn’t even talk it through with you. She allowed jealousy to consume her and she abandoned you. And Timesnatcher made you a traitor. Blame him, if you’re going to blame anyone.
He freed me…
He might have condemned you to exile rather than death, but he condemned you all the same!
I hadn’t quite thought about it that way before.
The champions never protected you, and the Magisterium – they always hated you. All of us. What we are. Even the pretty old… even Henthae. She hates us, just like she hates herself. Maybe she’ll come around, in the end, but they’ll never have your back. Not like us. Not like Theoras. Not like Tanra… But those others have gone now. Even the fairy. The sylph.
I smiled.
So what you’re saying is, I have a mouldy old gremlin and my kid brother and sister. It’s us against the world.
That’s the smile! And don’t forget the soul-tainting wraith dying to write Fundamentals of Footwear.
I felt myself scowling in confusion – I couldn’t help but wonder just whose mind that thought originated in –
Keep your suspicions – they’re worthless. Except cheese and ham, we’re practically indistinguishable, at least externally.
And… internally?
Don’t be so afraid! Psychic chuckles rolled through my head. There’s no real way to portray our differences. Not anymore. We’re joined, much like you with your eldritches.
I cocked my head.
You didn’t realise they exerted some modicum of control over you… ah. Oh yes. That explains much.
Modicum!
Oh, desist! Our vocabulary’s expanding, that’s all… Your own is considerable, but the Telese have words for things we… Never mind. Anyway, you’ve got one more undead critter left.
I do? Oh – yes.
I – or they – called the image of it to the forefront of my mind: the great carrion-bird of Zadhal. For some reason it felt more familiar than I’d anticipated, almost as though I’d summoned it once today already.
I forgot about it… I should’ve destroyed it a long time ago.
No. We’re in need of it.
I understood their thought.
No, I remonstrated. No, we aren’t.
You want to harass the creatures of Etherium? Again? You want to be Feychilde again, don’t you? You think you can just go back? You think you can be the same person, after everything that’s happened?
No! But – I still want to be Feychilde, I know it sounds stupid, but –
Remember Avaelar! Unbidden, they summoned up the memory before my mind’s-eye, the sylph denying me, warring with me, seeking his freedom… Ethereal beings aren’t without honour, even if their concept of it is alien to us – even if we’re the butt of their jokes sometimes. Why would you want to put them through it again?
You mean…
Undeath typically leads to stagnation. Altruistic vampires are a fiction. Why not avail yourself of that kind? Such creatures are, morally-speaking, the safer option.
Safer! Are you serious? Have you even been listening to yourselves…?
We can stop the malicious effects of the wraith’s mentality from seeping into your own. It’s a triviality to us. And think what you could gain.
But – I have my satyrs – I have Zab, and Blofm, and my squirrels – do you mean that I –
Summon them, Kas. Summon them, and we’ll see.
I looked around again at the dark elven ghosts, their scattered corpses –
Burning white spirits withdrew, floating back reluctantly. Corpses dragged themselves aside, some moaning lightly.
It wasn’t even necessary for me to force them to withdraw, but I didn’t want them to stand too close when I called on my joined entities, when I opened portals for the host of squirrels I still controlled.
“Well?” the twins said aloud, again in unison.
I sighed, then did as they asked.
Sarcamor and Sarminuid, the lanky blue satyrs covered in snow-white fur, fell out of me head-first, staggering onto the deck on clattering hooves. Zabalam, mouldy, pig-faced gremlin, toppled out of my torso and promptly fell on his ass. About them, a ring of jadeway-gates brought through my giant, golden-furred fauna and my confused-looking goblin.
I surveyed them all in wonder, realising just now how great my potential legion had become.
All these ghost-elves…
“Satyrs of the otherworld. Would you be free of your bondage?”
The twins’ voice really did have an eerie quality, the likes of which I’d never before experienced – and I’d experienced some awfully strange voices. The simultaneity of the words, expressed in a single sound, emanating from two separate sources – it made me shudder more than the prospect of giving up my ethereal assistants.
I looked up at my two satyrs, met their eyes, hoping my gaze could convey the sorrow I felt.
They were both staring at my missing arm with their beetle-wing black eyes.
“Master?” questioned one of them, Sarcamor, his voice bold and clear.
“Just answer them,” I said, and sighed, before straightening up with a little help from my left hand, fingers still curled about the post. “I should never have taken your fealty in the manner I did. It was improper of me. I was… under the spell of a fairy. I thought it was acceptable for me to demand your loyalty but… I’ve since had my mind changed.”
The twins allowed me that turn of phrase, at least.
I glanced over at them, caught them smirking at me.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Their telepathic laughter resounded in my head, and I returned my focus to the stunned-looking satyrs, driven more by my need to stop thinking about the twins’ new abilities as much as my interest in their answer. It was inappropriate of us, to stand in the midst of such desolation, and partake in levity.
The satyrs were regarding each other intently.
“Master, please!” Zab hissed in a mournful, thin voice. “Please, don’t send me away!”
The little gremlin was staring down at his bright-red shoes, and started grinding his several sets of teeth together, a panicked sound I’d never heard him make before.
Mistrust gnawed away at me.
Zel found him.
I cast my power over him, again and again – but there was nothing. None of the signs of betrayal that had made ‘Zelurra’ stand out. He might’ve looked a bit foul, but his name was clean.
He’s fine.
“It’s okay, Zab,” I said gently. “I’m not sending you anywhere.”
“Where… where is the sylph?” he asked suddenly, gazing up at me.
“I… We had a disagreement. I offered him his freedom. Like this.”
Zab shuddered, but instead of drawing away he clung to me.
The satyrs seemed to have made up their minds.
“Master,” said the second of them, Sarminuid, “we owe you much! It is not a mark of shame amongst our kindred to swear fealty to summoners of mortal blood, so long as they be valorous in nature and steely of spine. We knew from the outset you were of such ilk. We witnessed it with our own eyes, when you bore down upon many of your kindred – you and the red fiend.”
“It was truly a magnificent sight,” the first satyr piped up. He was grinning openly, sharp yellow teeth not hiding his fluorescent green tongue.
“Had you not permitted our sojourn at the court of Yellow Flowers, perhaps our affairs would not be so in order,” the second continued. “As things stand, we are victors. It would honour us to continue to lend you our strength.”
“And to draw upon mine in kind?”
He inclined his head slowly, his eyes suddenly narrowed, wary.
“Don’t worry.” I grinned like he’d been doing. “Tit for tat. I wouldn’t have it any other way, trust me.”
His smile returned, and I turned to the goblin.
“And you?” I asked Blofm.
“Got nowhere else to go,” she sniffed. “And I ain’t hatin’ meself, now, I guess.”
I couldn’t help arching a sanctimonious eyebrow when I cast a glance at the twins. “Well?” I echoed their earlier tone, right back at them.
Very good, Feychilde. And the squirrels?
I cast my gaze across the gigantic critters, which were doing their best to stay still, their big watery eyes glistening and their bushy tails twitching. I fell to studying the closest. The golden fur was long and glorious, softly catching the sky’s first light and amplifying it. The black nose was as big as my fist, the protruding pair of front teeth almost the length of my forearm.
I reached out my hand in invitation. “And you?”
I spoke the words – I extended the power –
The squirrels all vanished into a fizzing green portal, scrambling over each other in what looked to my eyes like a desperate hurry to escape.
“Oh… really…?”
I couldn’t hide my disappointment. Somehow, not having their trust – it stung. Even as I rejoined with Sarcamor and Sarminuid, with Zabalam, the flight of the squirrels disturbed me.
Must be disturbing you two, as well.
Gilaela flashed before my inner eye. Gilaela, as she once was, before the eolastyr –
They didn’t reply, and I soon forgot what I was commenting on anyway.
“So tell us – without any interference, without any of those boundaries and barriers.” Their conjoined voice had a musing quality. “What would you do next? What’s Feychilde’s plan for the following, I don’t know… hour?”
I turned back to face them, and nibbled my lower lip for a moment.
“I suppose we should… see to the injured. Help the ones who can’t help themselves.”
“And once you’ve seen to the injured, will you help them rebuild? Tit for tat?”
“I can…” I struggled with it for a moment. “I have options available to me.”
“You’re needed here.”
I nodded, feeling confused.
“When will it end? When will you come back, Kas?”
I knew what they meant but I couldn’t help it. “Come… back?”
“To Mund.”
My mouth went dry.
“I – I don’t know.”
“I hope you won’t leave us for too long.”
“L-Leave you?”
“And the sea journey’s going to take a lot longer without your help…”
“Just what are you talking about?”
I knew perfectly well what they were talking about but I couldn’t accept it, and in the very moment I tried to take the tone of the superior, the elder brother admonishing them for a poorly thought-through plan – in that moment they struck me with it.
“You don’t have to be nervous. We can help you with that, if you want.”
“Nervous.” I tried to chuckle, tried to brush it off. “Right.”
“You didn’t take off Bor’s amulet. You didn’t fight.”
It took me a moment to pinpoint the exact circumstance to which they were referring – and when I did I felt the flush touch my cheeks. “I didn’t know they were coming for me!” I cried. “I didn’t –“
“You want it to be over because you couldn’t take it anymore.”
“No!” I retorted, feeling sick all of a sudden. “No, I didn’t want it to be over –“
“We mean now. Now, just as much as then. You’ve given up.” They sighed. “Malas tried –“
“Malas!” I shrieked. “He did – this –“
“You were woken, but you fell back to sleep. He was trying to reawaken you. He took your arm to do it. There must be some sense to his nonsense – there simply must be.”
I nodded, feeling bludgeoned, not even knowing how to react.
“Your nervousness – it was because of us. But you’ve said it yourself. We’re in your world now. You can afford to be… reckless.”
I stared at them.
“Can you still create shields?”
The question came as such a surprise, such a shift in topic that it took me a moment to comply.
I put out my left hand, imagining a right one there beside it, copying the motions.
Circle. That came up stronger than before, even with its borders fluctuating, due to the sheer force with which the power flowed from me.
Triangle. What was a triangle without corners?
Weakness incarnate. It collapsed.
“I… Yes,” I reported after a moment. “The power comes out of me more quickly, now, but it ebbs more quickly too… And arranging it into the correct shape, that’s the tricky part… I can’t pinch it in the right places –“
We see what you mean, the voice suddenly said in my head. Try it now – try again.
I extruded the energies, watched them uncoil frantically across the field of my vision. I attempted once more to bring them into focus but aside from the circle-shield, which I suspected I could create with mere thought, the others were haphazard blobs.
Let your right arm be the source – feed it through your left – bit by bit –
It took longer, but I could still raise the triangle. The square. The pentagon. They were right. It was like squeezing sausage-meat out in dollops.
Good. Keep working on it. That’s it.
Their reassurances thrumming through my head, their guidance feeding me optimism, I slowly worked my way up to the octagon.
I was panting by now –
And then I felt the sudden absences of sensation as they chipped away at those negative feelings, every experience of difficulty being removed one by one from my mind.
I might’ve been panting, but I no longer knew it. I might’ve been straining mental muscles I hadn’t exercised properly in months, but I could only imagine the pain I should’ve been undergoing.
Shield Twelve came flickering into existence, each obtuse angle crisply-formed.
Th-thank you… Thank you…
Save it for a moment. We have company.
Can you stop talking in my own mind’s voice, please. I have… no idea what I mean. Company?
“Fine.” The difference was startling, reassuring. “She’s coming – Greenheart.”
I trained my gaze on the remnants of Telior, and I made out the albatross winging its way towards us from the city’s broken upper-levels. The bird was big enough as it was, but it grew as it neared us, more than could be explained by the shrinking of the distance between us.
She wants to fight?
Instinct brought my wraith into focus; I stopped leaning on the post, feeling the power surge once more into my legs.
“No. She wants to apologise.”
I gritted my teeth, and my arm-whips flailed of their own accord. Somehow, apologising was worse.
“Yes,” they agreed, “but there’ll be no more loss of life, not on our watch.”
I looked back at them, the twins standing there unbending despite the wind, despite the charnel-house they’d found themselves in.
You’re making her apologise.
“Of course not! This is a surprise to us too – we’re not diviners, you know… Anyway, if she wanted to fight you, we’d let her. She’s not so foolish.”
Not so foolish? I imagined the hosts she could summon, flocks of birds, swarms of insects – given cause and opportunity she could even augment them, make each and every one a fearsome opponent…
To pit them, against my host?
I glanced again across the silent, guilty-looking faces of my multitude. Hundreds of ghosts, and not just standard ones. Dark elven spirits, steeped in wickedness from birth.
“Don’t forget their shells.”
That was true. I had double the force, if you counted the elven-zombies. Even the mere concept of raising them as an army brought the shapes into sharp relief.
No, not zombies… Wights? But mindless…
“Yes. Yes, that looks right, given what you know.”
How is that possible?
“How are we supposed to know that?”
But doesn’t that mean –
“They’re stronger.”
And I’m –
“The master of all of them.”
All of them? But… these aren’t low-ranked, are they? How? Zel always said –
“She may have exaggerated. That, or she may have wanted you to come to an understanding…”
Understanding?
“Look, dear brother… You’ve got a… deeper Wellspring than many other archmages you’ve met, right? Think it through. Every piece of data in your mind corroborates the hypothesis that the later the archmage is awakened, the greater their average potential influence over reality. Each generation produced champions mightier than the last. It’s just the anomaly of the Founders, maybe just the first few generations, that throws off the curve.”
I suppose…
“All ending in the twins.”
I… guess I never thought of it that way.
“Further hypothesis: the twins are the last. Each variant of archmagery culminates in our arrival.”
I thought it through: I’d not heard of a single arch-wizard awakening after Saff and Tarr. No arch-sorcerers after Arxine and Orieg…
Culminates? You mean, you think it’s likely that…
“Likely? Yeah. There will be no more of us.”
But that’s meaningless! I protested. That’s not nearly enough evidence to –
“You don’t have to fight it. Roll with it.”
No more of us!
“No more of us, anywhere.”
The thoughts of doom I’d been entertaining for months finally sank in and I had no words, just staring at them slack-jawed. It was all too terrifying.
Mund –
The next Incursion –
Oh gods. These really are the End Times. We – we have to go back. We have to return!
By sheer instinct I twisted about, orienting myself towards the south-east, as though I could start to effect change in the Realm even at such a distant remove.
“Yes, but she’s coming. Deal with this first.”
Mund…
“Kas, please.”
I shook off my reverie, floating upwards to meet her in the air, but it proved unnecessary; the gleaming albatross swiftly swooped down at the deck and came to land, perched upon its rail just thirty feet away.
Well within my invisible shields.
“Hool Raz,” she hailed me, the druidess-voice pouring breathlessly from the bird’s beak. “Hool Raz, you haf killed zem. Killed zem all!”
I inclined my head solemnly, saying nothing. I probably didn’t make for an especially-reassuring sight, hovering half-shadowed in my tattered robe.
“I come viz… viz my sorry, Hool Raz. I voz made to act as I act. I thought ve… I voz save my city.”
I looked pointedly at Telior’s corpse.
Can you translate?
“Sure.”
“I don’t know you,” I said aloud. “I came here to escape something. I found… something worse. I brought it with me.”
I came to escape destiny. Doom found me. In my back-pocket all along.
“Pliz… Raz… Do not kill my people. Zey are ignorant but zey are innocent. Do not –”
“You think I’m going to hurt them?”
“You are not?”
“I shouldn’t have killed the dark elves!” My voice throbbed. “Even them! I shouldn’t have done it, okay?”
The great grey bird nodded warily.
“But they came. They pushed. I had to push back. It’s what I do.”
It’s what I used to do…
“And what I will do.”
The albatross cocked her head, as though to better regard me with the nearby eye.
“You travel to Vilthrazia?”
Viltrazi? I’ve seen something like that on the maps.
“Vilthrazia. The dark elf homeland, or, properly, the city in which they dwell. Far to the north. She hasn’t seen it, but she can imagine it.”
I saw a vast plain that I somehow knew to be the surface of Northril, frozen solid, covered in crisp white snow –
Crimson-brown trees, looming tall and pockmarked over the landscape like the rusted corpses of iron giants, trees which obtained their nutrition from a unique source.
And high above the frozen ocean, looking somehow upside down, three triangular black towers were suspended, spinning lazily at the centre of a storm –
“I don’t mean them,” I cried, shutting down my imagination and focussing on the druidess. “There’s something in Mund I have to deal with.”
“Mundt…”
The albatross shrank, just a little.
“Take me viz you.”
I stared at Greenheart in fascination.
“But… won’t they come back?” I pondered aloud. “You don’t want to go – to this Vilthrazia –”
“Vot use am I here?” she cried, and flapped her wings suddenly. “I can do nozzing – I can only vatch, and zey –“
“The people need a real leader,” I said sternly. “Someone who won’t betray an ally at the drop of a hat. Maybe you can be that.”
She lowered her great head, almost letting the tip of her beak rest on the deck.
“She’s needed where we’re going if we’re right, dear brother. We don’t know if the druid twins have come into their awakening yet…”
We’ve been away months… There’s no new arch-druids left in Mund – is that what you’re saying?
“We have to consider that it’s possible. Probable, even.”
And she really can’t restore the arm? That wasn’t part of Deymar’s game?
“Oh… oh Kas no. I’m sorry. That bit was real. What Mal Malas did to you…”
I get it. I couldn’t quite keep the bitterness from my mind-voice, but I was trying. Irreversible.
“Why do you want to go to Mund, anyway?” I called at last.
The head snaked back up slowly. The strange green eyes of the druidess just stared back at me for a moment, as though the question had nonplussed her.
“It…” she started, then clacked her beak in frustration. “It is Mundt.”
I barked laughter. I couldn’t help it.
“Ha! Hahahaha! You want to go to Mund? Fine. We’ll go to Mund. I’ll take you, show you what you’re missing. You didn’t take payment, did you? For your heroics?”
She shook her head in what looked to be a wary motion, her eyes staring with uncanny focus.
“Maybe that’s something we’ve been missing. Yeah, you can rejoin the nightmare with me. But – who are you? Reveal yourself.”
She flowed back into woman-shape, returning to her leather coat and woollen clothing. As she stood erect, perfectly balanced on the rail despite her boots resting on the slick surface, she reached up to remove her mask.
My heart almost stopped beating as she exposed her face.
The same almost-cleft chin, the same dimpled cheeks… Were it not for the emerald-glittering eyes, the darkness of her hair – she would’ve almost been Emrelet’s twin. Older, certainly, but by how much I was uncertain.
“I am Kirid Oanor, daughter of Telior. Sin-Aidre, Greenheart as you vould have it.”
I loosened my hold on my wraith a little, letting myself appear as almost an ordinary mortal once more.
“I am Kas. Kastyr Mortenn, son of Mund. Formerly Feychilde… Formerly Raz.”
“Feychilt…”
Hearing it from her lips – it sounded so similar – so familiar…
“But I have heard of you! Zey called you ze – ze Liberator of Zat-hal.”
I couldn’t believe it. “You – heard of me? Here? How?”
“From ze sailors! Orcan – he always collect vord from Mundt. Timesnaaatcher. Lifcloak.”
“Leafcloak?” I retorted, perhaps a bit harshly. “She’s dead. She died, in Zadhal. We even had a ceremony…”
The druidess nodded.
“She’s not lying, Kas,” came the twins’ prompting. “Right now in Orcan’s head – oh. Oh, my…”
What?
“It seems Orcan’s heard from travellers aboard two separate ships that Timesnatcher has been driven mad. And – everyone thinks Nightfell is leading the city now.”
Nightfell? I haven’t even heard –
“We’ve got something to tell you, about Tanra…”
Tanra!
“It never came up… Ah… Why don’t we return to Telior first? Pack our things?”
The image rose up before my mind – digging in the rubble for my belongings, watching priceless books of magic floating on the morning waves, shredded down to the near-invulnerable pages…
“No,” I said aloud.
Kirid Oanor, druidess of Telior, looked at me in concern, but I turned my head to regard my siblings, ignoring her completely.
“We don’t go back,” I said. “We don’t confront the king and his people, and we don’t save them either. Anything we need the imps can fetch. We go home, now. And you tell me everything you know. Everything you think you know.” I drew a shuddering breath. “She’s the only friend I had left.”
Jaid nodded as Jaroan shook his head, but when they spoke it was still in unison:
“We think… she needs your help.”
I clenched my fist. How could they let this go, for so long, if they knew something was wrong?
“But you mistake us,” they said. “The real reason we need to go to Telior…
“Good luck getting your imps to fetch Orcan.”
* * *
In the grey light of dawn, I soared with the twins above the shoreline. From overhead the extent of the destruction was plain to see, but also somehow plain to understand as well, like the play-set of some petulant rich-kid, kicked apart in a moment of anger.
Two-thirds of the Tower of the Warlock had simply vanished. The palace square had become a wooden crater as its support-structures were blown apart, and now a jagged field of splintered timbers greeted the eye, sagging and groaning under the weight of the chaos atop it. There were cries, of course – warbling wails, the screams of those shattered by loss – but out of much of the city there seeped only a pervading quiet. The absence of life called out to me louder than the voices of the living. I sensed the white fingers trapped in the breakers, the snapped limbs tangled in the nets beneath the waves. The singers of Enye had fallen silent. Perhaps those heavenly sounds would never again be heard in this place.
Perhaps that was its due.
I brought us down towards the king’s halls, drifting slowly down through the air. Many of the divine statues had fallen, rent in two by the huge, frozen missiles. Wyrda’s mouth was choked with rubble, great glistening boulders of ice lying here and there amidst the tumbled rock. Black-red puddles clung to the motionless elbows and feet, limbs of the fallen protruding from beneath the vast, icy remnants of the dark elves’ spells, and from beneath the piled planks, the caved-in rock.
Me, I thought, surveying the death. It was all me.
“No. We talked about this. You –“
You want me to not take responsibility, but the responsibility is mine. Mine alone.
I fought them for it – the independence, the sense of self –
And, just then, I felt the way they vacated my mind. Willingly. Expectantly.
They want me to do this, I realised. They want me… to see…
To feel it. To know it’s mine.
Nafala…?
They didn’t reply, and permitted me the understanding of what that silence meant.
I didn’t weep, but as we floated ghostlike above the wreckage I felt the tears running down my incorporeal face all the same. They were colder than cold, pouring uncontrolled from my eyes, tickling my cheeks until they fell, regaining their substance to patter on the detritus.
I took the twins through the stone, each of us holding our breath.
Where? I thought.
Before I could even formulate the basic responses that would put ideas in my head, start providing me with best-guessed routes to the hiding places beneath the palace, the twins filled me with their surety.
“Down this way. A little to the left. Down some more.”
They didn’t control my movements but they guided me with little impulses, tugs to one side and then the other, until, after passing through several empty spaces, we fell into a cavern drenched in wizard-light, wizard-warmth.
Over a hundred people were crammed into the area, standing huddled in the wet galleries, crouching upon the irregular boulders. Many wept. Many more simply stared at the floor, at the ceilings, or into the eyes of loved ones, tearless and pale. Perhaps kept isolated from fear and danger for too long, a few dared to wear bored expressions, the full implications of the morning’s events still beyond their grasp.
Almost all here were still decked out in their fineries, the hats and capes and dresses of minor nobles – the garments they’d donned when the terror of the dark elves’ approach had been assuaged. When they’d been brought to the palace and into Deymar’s protection…
Not a commoner amongst them.
I instantly spotted the giant of a king, in a circle of his closest advisors, our target amongst them.
The wizard, for what it was worth, was one of those with a petulant sneer on his face.
I sighed inwardly as we fully penetrated the rock and emerged into the air, drifting down in their midst.
It took them a few seconds to spot us, despite the abundance of yellow-white illumination rebounding off the dark grey walls.
“Not us. Just you. We’re actually invisible, just so you know.”
“Hool Raz!” a voice screamed from the crowd. A finger was pointed at me, and then another.
A handful reacted with anger. Most cowered.
“No need for shields. Don’t land, and there’ll be no violence here. We can guarantee it.”
I slowed, then stopped our descent.
Looking down into King Deymar’s slack-jawed face, there was a part of me that longed to don the leer, extract my vengeance in his terror – he wasn’t to know my newly-invested arch-enchanter siblings had formed a compact against violence.
But I felt all the other eyes on me. Some I wanted to share in the king’s fright, but there were too many here. My disdain was not yet so generalised.
“You’ve been a naughty boy, Deymar. Very naughty. You thought throwing one pup to the wolves would stay the pack but you were wrong. Now, your city’s paid the price for your foolishness.”
“You’ve seen it?” someone cried.
“Vot has happened?” another asked in a shrill voice.
“Telior is no more.”
More gasps, screams, wails.
I looked down at Deymar, still doing my best not to smile.
“The lives lost, dear brother. Do not forget.”
The scenes flashed before my inner eye once more.
I won’t.
I steeled myself, and the other smile spread across my lips. Not gloating. Not amused. Not proud.
The sorrowful smile of the champion, despair mingled with pity. The smile of losing your arm to a dragon at three in the morning and coming home to be handed over to a host of torturers and carrying on regardless.
I might’ve thought I was worse than them because I knew and I didn’t care. Maybe I’d been right. But at least I had eyes to open. At least I could see the truth.
Look at them. The rich and noble of Telior. Men and women of success and vanity.
How little their purses and bloodlines avail them now.
Many were chattering frantically in Telese, even in the king’s circle; but he and Orcan were amongst the few not yet tearing out their hair, still staring up at me warily.
“Did you really think it would work, Mr. Northsword? Did you think they could defeat me? You already knew I beat them once.”
“Now you’re just being liberal with the truth. They totally would’ve killed you, if we didn’t stop them.”
Hush.
“Not that we want to do what you may come to think of as ‘doing-a-Zel’ but, please –“
You’re totally doing a Zel. Let me speak. You know I don’t think I’m invulnerable. The lesson’s stuck.
“Lying to us, and yourself, again… What Malas taught you was that you aren’t made out of glass, either.”
Enough!
I had no idea what Deymar thought of our extended staring-match, but I’d been silent at least fifteen seconds now, conducting my little psychic debate.
I made my next words a quiet statement, wearing that sad, almost-sympathetic grin.
“You didn’t trust your own countrymen to stand with me. You don’t believe in their strength. When I arrived here you took me in with open arms. I was just to be your tool, then. An offering to the gods of the North, to the dark elves who haunted your dreams.
“I never thought to see such weakness in you. And I fear it would’ve infected me, had I stayed longer. It’s not just blindness. It’s eyelessness…“
If you’re making him stay silent –
“We’re not. He’s just confused.”
Confused! I thought, enraged. Why does he, why should he get the chance to be con-
“He won’t say it, but he was just trying to do his best.” Their mind-voice was low, dignified. “Do his best, in a bad situation. You weren’t a sacrifice – he isn’t evil.”
“He’s not a dark elf.”
“No, he – he thought of you as someone he could be friends with.”
I felt it as my expression morphed to one of horror.
Only then did he break his silence.
“Stayed longer?” His voice was plaintive, close to breaking. “Raz… Must you leave us, then? They said that they would enchant me. They said that I could not resist, no matter what…” He reached up and wrung his beard suddenly. “I took the harder road, because I feared what -” he choked “– what they would make me do…”
Finally he looked away, down at the ground.
“And if it had just been me – if you hadn’t made your son do it too, give up my brother and sister –“
“My son!” he bellowed, turning tear-filled eyes back upon me once more. “My son is missing –“
“He’s still alive, though,” the twins supplied. “About a hundred feet above us. Not alone, either.”
“– if there were options, if I had ideas!” The king stamped on the stone and I could’ve sworn I heard rock fracture beneath his boot. “If you had been here when they came! Your brother and sister, you – three lives, against what could have been… could have been… utter destruction…”
His voice died, and he was still once more, just the eyes stirring, searching the walls.
“Now you preside over utter destruction,” I observed. “Your son is safe, up there.” I gestured at the ceiling with a nod. “I hope it consoles you that you lost little.”
“Lost little!” He howled his retort, and bunched his right fist.
“You’re not exactly making this easy, dear brother.”
“Personally, I mean.” I shrugged at him. “Some lost more. Some had more to lose. Do you really think you’re so special? Any of you? Do you think you aren’t just bags of blood, begging for release?”
I eyed them dangerously, and they could feel it, my ill-will. A shivering moan swept through the throng. No one wanted to answer.
My own right arm came alive but it didn’t end in a fist – cerulean tendrils of death were slowly extending from that unspeakable void-limb –
Extending faster –
Halting.
“No, Kas. We’ll stop the wraith, but you have to change back in its absence.”
I looked down at my living force-whips, suddenly seeing them for what they were for the first time. Knowing what they represented on both its faces.
“Yes. It’ll get easier. It’ll stop happening. Please just relax.”
But – the deaths – all that murder –
“It was you, yes, we know. It’s okay. Calm down. You can –“
But it was mine, mine, mine! And it was necessary! It was what they deserved!
“No, Kas. Relax now.”
And I was relaxed again.
As though he’d been waiting for my expression to soften once more, Orcan carefully removed the panic from his own features, readopting the haughty smirk before speaking.
“Where is Sin-Aidre?” the ancient arch-wizard demanded at last in his flawless Mundic. “What have you done with her?”
“She awaits you, outside.” I fixed my gaze on him finally, and said it as plainly as I could: “Come with us. Come to Mund. You can make a difference.”
“I will make a difference here!” he huffed, clearly offended. “Whatever this talk – Sin-Aidre will not want to go with you –”
“It was her idea, you old clod!” I sighed. “Honestly, I think she just wants to escape… this. What difference will you make here, really? Sure – each to their measure in the making, and all that – but you’re an archmage. What’s really going on in that head of yours? Why do you hate me so much? You know we could’ve fought them together, surely!”
“We do not fight! Our power is not to meddle in the affairs of men!” He looked offended. “We are elevated by the gods themselves, because we have the strength to stand above –“
“You’re a coward,” I summarised. Loudly.
“You do not get to say this – you were not here to fight!” he shrieked. “You are ze coward! You destroy Telior, and now flee back to the black womb that bore you, forked tail between your legs! Go, then! Flee, warlock! But do not think me the weak one!” He swivelled his head towards Deymar. “Kur hool, ku silv –“
“Yes.”
I cut him off, and my word was as the voice of the storm, a crackling wave of sonic power that had them all clutching the sides of their heads.
“Yes, I destroyed Telior! If I hadn’t killed the dark elves on Northril, they wouldn’t have come. But if you hadn’t handed me over, they never would’ve touched your precious city! I spilt the first blood, and I would’ve spilt the last – for you. Now it’s your redness in the waters that’ll draw in the sharks!” I drew a deep breath. “But I’m an agent of Mortiforn, Kultemeren, N-n-n-n…”
I couldn’t speak Nentheleme’s name.
“Not the Prince of Chains,” I managed. “Not Mother-Chaos. And not the Sea-Queen. The sacrifice was just. Maybe some lost less than others, but we all lost.” I eyed the king. “I told you of the Crucible. I have reason to believe it’s coming, more reason than ever before. You think you’ve lost it all now? Send him with me. He’ll do it at your command, won’t he?”
Instead of channelling his authority, Deymar seemed to shrink into himself. He looked furtively at his arch-wizard, suddenly seeming frightened.
He won’t be leading these people much longer.
“No he won’t. He’ll be far happier, we think.”
“The Crucible, really…” Orcan said sceptically, looking between the two of us.
“We’ll make a champion of you yet,” I said, trying the grin once more.
The twins piped up, squirting their enthusiasm directly into my brain, and although they spoke in the same voice, they were constantly tripping over themselves trying to make their arguments.
“It’s the only way without making him our puppet, and –“
“We know you wouldn’t like that, and –“
“We wouldn’t like it either!”
“And the rest deserve to know!”
“Yeah, Vardae was right! Everyone does!”
“Of course!”
I sighed inwardly in response, and they quietened down.
“Prepare for an interesting experience.” I cast my gaze across the crowd. “All of you.”
Three minutes later, Orcan Finfaltik in tow, we made our way back up through the rock, to meet with Kirid Oanor above the ruins of Telior. We left behind the former rulers of this place, reeling in a conglomeration of dark lore, founded upon Everseer’s words, and Mal Malas’s. A vision to approximate the heretics’.
The dragons were coming. The Dracofont was Returning.
And we weren’t staying behind. We were going back to face them.
We were going to fight.
* * *
Despite his obvious prowess, it seemed our wizard wasn’t comfortable with flying unsupported. Instead he brought a thin, smooth shelf of the coast’s black stone with him, and we stood or sat upon the soaring rock, gazing down as we drew closer to the dark elves’ ships. If anything, for me this method was worse, and a touch of my old nausea came back; I tapped a little more wraith, settling myself. I vastly preferred flying the other way, but I supposed there was no chance of falling, and he’d incorporated a back-rest into the rock so that we weren’t completely open on all sides.
“You okay with all this, then, Orcan?” I asked to break the uncomfortable silence, distract my thoughts.
“Okay?” the wizard growled through gritted teeth. He was standing with his back against the back-rest, arms folded in his sleeves beneath the fur cloak. “Dragons? Five ancient dragons?”
He shook his head.
“But you’re as brave as you said.” I tried to smile reassuringly at him, but he had his eyes fixed on the bony goliaths ahead. “You didn’t hesitate even for a moment.”
“Do not flatter me, warlock.” The hate had gone out of his voice, but not the bitterness. “I only do my duty.”
“I thought we archmages weren’t supposed to go to war.”
“This is not a battle,” he grunted. “This is not an army, mortal souls locked in contest. What you showed me…” He glanced at the twins, glanced away again. “I said you fled. But I was wrong. It’s coming, for all of us, and we can’t escape. This is… yes – this is a natural disaster.” His brow furrowed into a look of intense determination. “I will help.”
I loosed a ‘heh’ of appreciation, then turned to glance at Greenheart. She’d taken the twins’ vision without any outward sign of dismay, but their reports told me she’d been thrown back into self-doubt. Her gaze wasn’t on the dark elf ships we were approaching, their nethernal energies still burning bright in the morning dimness. She stared instead into the sky above the bleak horizon, as if searching for the sun beyond the clouds.
“She’ll be okay, Kas. We’re being careful not to change people. We’ll help her come round, when it’s time.”
All this talk of ‘not changing’ people – the ease with which their new powers had come to them, it worried me, and I couldn’t help but –
“We know it worries you. The fact it’s worrying you should tell you you don’t need to worry!”
I… I suppose you’re right. I –
I didn’t quite know how to think it.
“We know, Kas. We feel the same way.”
It was never about the glory, you know. Or the money. It was… the apartment, at first. But it was always you. Always. When I escaped Zyger – all I wanted – all I needed to do –
“We all gave it up together. It was the same for us. You were all that mattered. And we’re inseparable now. You don’t need to worry anymore. Wherever you go, we’ll reach you.”
Except Zyger.
The three of us chuckled dryly together in our shared mind-space.
For the first time in a very long time, a kind of contentedness came over me. Sure, I’d lost, here. And I was on my way to face trials the likes of which the world had never seen before, untested allies beside me.
But I had purpose. I had what Malas wanted to instil in me.
So is this all his plan, do you think?
Unexpectedly, the twins spoke in their one voice, aloud so that all of us could hear.
“He’s right. We can’t escape. We can only face it, and win, or lose.”
I looked over at them, as they reached out for each others’ hands.
“But we can handle loss,” they finished. “Let’s see if they can.”
“The dragons?” I murmured.
They nodded.
“The dragons fought against loss,” I surmised. “All this time.”
“They fought it for aeons,” they replied. “They are more scared of death than we are.”
We passed over the dark elves’ ships, and I collected my bounty: the throngs of ascended ancients hanging on the wind, and the mindless wights lying silent and still across the decks.
The astral recoil of so many nethernal gates clanging shut simultaneously served to disrupt the spells binding the ships together. Like flames snuffed to embers, the amethyst energies surging about the surfaces of the titanic vessels fell to a dim glow.
I reached out with my shapes and poked the ships with my power. Just a touch. A gentle nudge. But they were keyed to me.
One by one they fell apart, shuddering as ten million unjustly-stolen pieces of bone showered down into the waves.
The tide carried the corpse-parts back to Telior, where the singers no longer sang. Yet for all the destruction, for all the death, for all the silence… I knew even this would not fill Wyrda’s maw, choke her, sate her black hunger, slake the thirst salted by a thousand ocean depths.
For all the destruction, all the death… all the silence…
There was more to come.
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