PLATINUM 1.1: A LITTLE BIT OF FEY INTERFERENCE

“That is how the future is determined. I know yours, dear reader. Yet it is only in the context of an ending that one can approach an understanding of a beginning. That is the diviner’s true gift. Not to know – but to understand. If it frightens you to realise I understand you better than you do yourself, I would recommend that you set aside this memoir… put out the candle and go outside. Meet your friends. Forget it all for light and laughter. I know, however, that you shan’t. My words already ensnare their prey. Such warnings, no matter how deserved, are always made in vain. Very well, then. Let us see what I might show you.”

– from ‘The Notes of Timesnatcher’, recovered after the Fall

I moved slowly along the alleyway. I was trying – without enough success – to avoid the puddles of bodily fluids that festooned the tiny, dark passage. It was as though someone had opened a manhole to a demi-plane of sewage and forgot to shut it after them. At the same time I was doing my best to keep close to the oaken wall of the building. Bit by bit I was approaching the edge of the street.

They’re round this corner? I ‘spoke’ the thought carefully and clearly.

“Just them, in the middle of the roadway,” my little passenger rustled in my mind. “Less than fifty feet away.”

I checked the fit of the sheath on my left forearm, swivelling it round a few times until it felt less uncomfortable; it held my explosive dagger, my weapon of last resort, safely hidden inside the voluminous sleeve of my robe.

All of them? I asked.

“All six present,” she silently replied. “Been here awhile – their glyphs are almost complete. How certain are you about the magisters? They must be having a busy night if they’ve not shown yet, considering the darkmages are drawing Circles of Bellesoph in the muck and –”

So no bystanders in the way? I pressed. I was less than five feet from the corner now, agitated to get started, and I suspected she knew it. Zel?

“We’re clear. No wagons or walkers in sight, anyway. I can’t even sense any observers in the buildings, though I can’t rule out that being something they’ve done deliberately with a spell. Looks like everyone with any sense shuttered the windows or put out the candles minutes ago. Almost half of these buildings are derelict.”

I didn’t know if I’d use that word myself. This place looked pretty nice compared with where I lived – though she probably just classed all the buildings back home as derelict. I was born and raised about a mile from here, but I’d never been in these exact parts before – I lived in a maze, no doubt about it. Home might’ve been a mile away as the crow flew, but I’d probably covered more than three times that distance to get here tonight. I realised I could hear the river in the distance – we were quite far to the south and west, near the borders of Lowtown.

I’d scared the darkmages good and proper.

Just because they’re in a sorry state doesn’t mean the buildings are empty. It can mean the opposite.

“True.”

I considered it. The darkmages are avoiding indoor spaces after what we did to them last time. But actually summoning something, out here in the open? Without masks? They must be terrified of us.

“It’s not like they’re going to find anywhere quieter that you can’t flood again, is it?”

I thought through my options, too much of a blur for her to follow. Subtlety wasn’t rising to the top of the list.

“What’re you doing?”

I stepped into view, facing them across the deserted street.

Better this way.

“No! Not better. Riskier.”

Come on. You know it’s got to be like this. We tried it your way. They already got away once.

The street was pretty wide and straight, compared to most roadways around here. They called our district Sticktown, and it was one of the biggest, poorest districts in what surely had to be the world’s biggest, richest city. As usual, the street had dirt tracks through the centre, with a few bits of flagstones and cobbles poking up through the mud. The walkways at the edges of the road were constructed from crudely nailed-together planks where they weren’t missing entirely. Almost all the buildings were wooden, their small and mostly-glassless windows covered. The street itself disappeared into shifting walls of the city’s foul smog, making it impossible to see the corner in either direction – it was like someone had set off a dozen mistballs, no expense spared.

And the Six were there, close enough that I could throw a brick at them.

As soon as they saw me, the four at the back set to quickly finishing the symbols gouged in the dirt, rattling off incantations with hurried, haunted tones to their voices.

It was easier for me. I was an archmage.

It meant less than it sounded, at least for the foreseeable future. Yes, an archmage in the fullness of their power (whenever that happened) would vastly outstrip any mage. But I was far from that today. My training in sorcery added up to about two weeks, and my training in the other magical disciplines amounted to almost zilch – just the stuff I’d heard growing up, the same basic information any random idiot could recite.

No, the main difference, the only difference worth counting, between a mage and an archmage was the fact that archmagery couldn’t be bought. Couldn’t be learned. It was the universe’s way of undermining the scheming nobles, the obscene merchant-princes, those who thought they could control power.

It meant someone like me, a sixteen-year-old runt from the gutter with zero knowledge, could go up against experienced darkmages like the Cannibal Six with a smile on his face.

The moon was barely there to be witnessed, Kaile’s blind eye almost closed, and the sky was choked with clouds… but with my assistant’s augmentation I could see by the hidden starlight, every bit as well as I could see by the sun an hour before dusk. The two Cannibals at the front were dressed the same as the others – the plum-purple velvet robes embroidered with laughing skulls, their cowls hiding their faces now they’d left their fancy masks behind. Much like me, really, save that my garment was a smoky grey colour, plain and without decoration. I had a scarf wrapped around my lower face beneath the hood, to doubly-ensure my anonymity.

I didn’t know their real names, of course, but I could tell who these two were from both their frames and the fact they weren’t cowering at the back.

“Souuuul-bi-terrrrr…” I used a mocking sing-song voice to draw out the name of the behemoth of a man on the left – I was pretty tall but I’d only come up to his nose, and he was meaty in the way that would’ve led to him being mocked about orcish ancestry in his school days. I’d have happily wagered that one of his legs would weigh more than me. “You really have to stop letting me catch you with your pants down like this,” I chattered on.

Soulbiter folded his tree-trunk-like arms.

“Or robes hiked up. However that works…”

“You’d best leave, Feychilde,” said Screamsong, the lithe woman at Soulbiter’s side, her exquisite accent twisted as she growled.

“You sound a bit tense, Screamy. How about ‘Softsong’? ‘Soothingsong’?”

“We really are going to have to devour you, boy.”

“Come on,” I scoffed.

“It is our right,” she insisted, with a tremor of rage in her voice. She squeezed the handle of the dagger she held in both hands like she wanted to throttle it to death, but she didn’t let her feet carry her forwards.

Too smart to approach too close – either that, or instinct wouldn’t let her threaten me directly. She knew that, while I might look defenceless, as an arch-sorcerer I could actually be loitering behind several layers of protection… protections some of which, if I understood it correctly, might retaliate automatically upon my assailants.

Which was pretty lucky for me, as I had nothing like that.

“You mean, you guys actually do that? Eat people?” I put on a bit of a shudder. I already knew they actually did that. “No wonder us sorcerers have a bad name. You’re ruining it for the rest of us, don’t you know? We all got together and had a meeting about it. You’re out of the club.”

She straightened up and spoke from the shadows of her hood with a cold, fanatical voice. “The heart of an enemy is a powerful magical reagent, permitting the summoning of eighth-rank spirits –”

“I flicked through a couple of your books, you know, after I kicked you out of that little den. Bit damp. You should really do something to protect them from incidental damage.” I was quite happy to let her buy her friends time to cast their meagre spells ten feet behind her. “What’s with all the hooks in the artwork, by the way? Beware the Fisherman Six! I honestly thought it was a cookbook at first. ‘Bring the furnace to a high temperature, add the kidney to the liver, cook for twelve minutes…’ What I was getting at, was that I kind of feel sorry for you guys. You have to go through so much trouble to achieve so little. All these symbols and words and prayers to the Blade-Lord are bad enough – but the cuisine? There’s no way I’d be into sorcery if I had to eat bits of people.”

Someone behind Screamsong was bleating excitedly. One of the ring-like symbols on the ground suddenly lit up in bright, smokeless red flames which grew quickly, shooting up to a height of fifteen feet or more. A heavy black shape was shouldering its way through the burning blood-hued portal.

“I mean, what’s this? A ‘fourth-rank spirit’?” I pointed a finger at the demon they’d conjured that now towered in the middle of street, a minotaur-looking thing eleven or twelve feet tall. It was a solid wall of black iron armour bristling with six-inch long spikes, even its snout and horns sprouting thorns of the dark metal. A massive four-fingered hand clutched the haft of a smouldering warhammer so huge it would’ve easily snapped the arm off any mortal man who dared a one-handed grip.

“Sixth rank, they’d call it. Destroyer class. It’s a bintaborax.”

Shut up. I knew that.

“No you didn’t. And you only vaguely recognise its name because I told you last time it came up.”

I’m concentrating. Some of us actually have a, like, body at stake here, remember?

“I won’t die if you die, but that doesn’t mean it would cost me nothing.”

Soulbiter’s voice was loud. Not loud like the blare of a trumpet; it rolled, deep like a drum, like a wave on the rocks.

“You pretend at competence, child,” he intoned, “but you don’t know what it is. You are less than an apprentice. ‘Champion!’” He roared the word. “Archmages like you are abominations!”

“That kind of thing?” I asked cheerily, ignoring his insults, pointing again at the demon as it stretched its limbs. Two more rings of red fire were springing up behind it. “I tend to call them Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks. Yours looks like their itty bitty toddler, though.”

“Aren’t you taking this too far?”

You know my rule. If I take them down this way, the others will find out. They’ll know not to mess with Sticktowners. Better to go elsewhere and get beat than come round my way and get humiliated.

“I thought we were here for the reward.”

Come on. You know it was never just that.

Screamsong turned and moved aside, barking an order in the guttural tongue of hell: “Kasena o zi dweonlo; thanatar melez!”

The demon lowered its head, centring its two vicious horns on me, and its metal hooves rang on the stones as it stamped its feet then crouched, readying itself.

“She’s giving it the command to attack, Kas!”

The psychic warning of my delightful, not overbearing at all advisor was oh-so-insightful.

“Very funny.”

I do happen to understand Infernal, you know?

The bintaborax charged straight between Soulbiter and Screamsong, barrelling right for me.

“It’s going to crush you!”

The demon got about ten feet from me before my upraised finger, wagging side to side, seemingly stopped it in its tracks; it hurriedly halted, almost stumbling in its haste to obey.

Whether it was just the pain my very gaze inflicted, or the gesture – it was effective.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I admonished it gently, still wagging my finger. Within two seconds the minotaur’s head was following my motions. “Now who’s a good puppy! Who’s a good boy!”

Zel, please take note.

“Yes?”

If my head’s on the block, and the axe is swinging, and they just said something? Don’t bother translating. I can figure out ‘off with his head’, especially when the axe is a twelve-foot tall hellspawn.

“Now the axe is in your hands – what’re you going to do with it?”

I could sense the disarray this turn of events had brought into the minds of my opponents from their body language; Screamsong was seemingly staring at Soulbiter imploringly while his shoulders slumped in resignation. By the looks of things they’d spent their best summon too early. Under the bintaborax’s arms I could see the Six clearly, along with the other two demons they’d managed to conjure.

The first was a thing that could have been a giant blob of mucus were it not for the demented face on its flank – the fiend was vaguely spherical in shape but sunken under its own weight, fluorescent green and grotesque. It crested some five feet off the ground and had to be half that again in width at its widest part; it must have weighed a ton or two. The second fiend was a tall, thin creature comprised of razor-blades, constantly moving back and forth and side to side to balance on the pointed tips of its roughly sword-shaped legs. It had two clocks for eyes and a giant pendulum tongue swinging rhythmically, ticking in pace with its steps.

“A draumgerel and a kinkalaman. Third and fifth ranks.”

This year, Father Time, I really want something I can implant into my brain that tells me the names of all the things that want to kill me.

To the bintaborax I folded open my hands in the peculiar way that called out to me, and tried to tell it to get in. A barking, coughing sound, “kherem”, erupted from my mouth; and the minotaur was gone in a flash of red light.

I wasn’t taking names – not from demons. I had bound demons like this a few times now, but I didn’t want to use them. It seemed like the mages learning sorcery most-often focussed on the rituals of necromancy or the rituals of demonology; undead and infernal ‘eldritches’ (as such creatures were called) offered some seriously overt muscle while, as a rule, the faerie were too fickle to be reliable. In fact use of them was so uncommon there was, at least as far as I was aware, no such thing as feymancy or etherology. As an archmage I wouldn’t even suffer from the worst disadvantages of these kinds of sorcery – no having to make deals with devils for me, or having to spend hours in the laboratory with dead bodies. Arch-sorcerers didn’t need deals, didn’t need rites.

But the fey eldritches were my favourites. They were mischievous. No one was trying to rank them.

How I’d landed the most conservative faerie queen in the land for my parasitic familiar, I’d never understand.

“Har-har.”

I wasn’t sure whether my dismissal of their summon would spur the Six on or demoralise them further. Screamsong and Soulbiter withdrew, but only a few paces, before Soulbiter spoke a few words in the infernal tongue and sent the two remaining demons at me.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The advantage of the sorcerer was versatility, really. We couldn’t match the powers of destruction possessed by a wizard, the manipulation of an enchanter, the slipperiness of a diviner, or the healing of a druid; but we could perhaps push at those boundaries, given the right combination of weird creatures at our beck and call.

“Preeee-senting,” I cried, “for one night only! Flood Boy and The Mummifiers!”

I spread open my hands and cast my arms wide. Where red flames had shot into the air to allow demons into this reality, now green arcs of lightning crackled and fizzed, foaming open as my own minions surged out.

The first, whom I’d named Flood Boy as of the past seven seconds, they’d met already. He was a faun, a miniature man about three and a half feet tall, with furry deer’s legs complete with hooves. He sported a well-groomed little goatee beard on his face and a tiny muscled six-pack across his midriff. A small curved horn protruded from each of his temples. He already had a half-drunken sparkle in his emerald eye, and a lopsided grin spread across his face as he looked at the approaching fiends and the cringing purple-clad cultists behind them. He evidently recognised the Cannibal Six from earlier in the evening.

The other two, ‘The Mummifiers’, were green-eyed goblins, each holding one end of a furled piece of thick, heavy parchment. Short and squat but still recognisably humanoid, they had the droopy ears, pointed chin and nose, and grey, pockmarked skin characteristic of their kind. Unlike the faun, I’d had to browbeat them into submission when I’d bound them, and they performed their service unwillingly, their expressions sour, their stubby fangs firmly hidden behind their wide, slug-like lips.

“Flood Boy, let’s see how quick you can make that thing fall apart,” I said, nodding at the kinkalaman, the razor-fiend.

The faun quirked an eyebrow at me, but went ahead with reaching into whatever invisible space held his things, retrieving his goblet and his pipes.

“Mummifiers, bogey at eleven o’clock!”

The nearest (Blodd? Blodg?) only glared at me, but the other (Graggag?) dutifully began moving away from his partner, letting the parchment unfurl between them as he approached the draumgerel.

Soulbiter and Screamsong were shouting their own commands, and battle was joined.

Flood Boy hefted his golden chalice – a cup big for a full grown man, gigantic-looking in his little hand – high over his head, and waved it. Clear white wine spilled over the rim in a sheet, gleaming in the starlight as it fell towards the dirt. He had his tiny pipes held to his lips with his other hand, and blew a single long note – high-pitched, very different from the low-pitched thrum he’d used earlier tonight which had swelled the wine into a mighty wave.

This time, as the wine coursed down to the point where he held the pipes it suddenly crystallised into a curtain of frozen droplets and shot forwards like a storm of icy darts, propelled on the endless note shrilling into the night.

Well that’ll get the magisters’ attention.

The razor-fiend darted side to side as it advanced, bounding towards Flood Boy, doing its best to avoid the relentless blast, but it only managed three wavering steps before it was caught by the massive beam of ice, taking the blow in the central torso-area where two massive blades were angled like a ribcage. It flipped over as it was sent sprawling on its face, its sword-like limbs folded up behind it in the air, like the legs of a dead spider.

To my other side, the goblins had taken the blob-thing in their capable, filthy hands. The draumgerel had gobbed some searing-hot gelatinous matter at them, but they had easily evaded its clumsy attacks and let out a good fifty feet of their endless indestructible parchment now. (I’d stopped short of asking for clarification when, having been asked which animal the skin was taken from to create such wondrous parchment, they had merely exchanged knowing leers and snorted in laughter… I didn’t need to know that badly.)

Their trick was like the hastening spells that caused time to slow for the recipient. Sort-of. It was limited: they could move incredibly quickly towards one another around an object or foe, so long as they were each holding one end of the roll. They had unlimited rolls, but once they tied a knot that roll was done. And every roll would disappear the moment sunlight touched any part of it.

The mouth on the side of the blob-fiend moaned in an ear-popping, gurgling voice that was loud even over the music of Flood Boy’s pipes. It was being inexorably enveloped in hundreds of feet of parchment, but its mass was seeping out where the edges of the material weren’t lining up.

On my right, Flood Boy had the razor-fiend pinned against the only wall made out of bricks in the area, the side of a tall, windowless warehouse. The glittering battering-ram of ice smashed into it over and over, sending its sword-limbs splaying this way and that; its torso was beginning to freeze to the wall with the accumulation of missiles, forming a single giant frozen lump at the centre.

On my left was what could be likened to only a giant’s extremely well-used handkerchief.

I looked across the street at the Cannibal Six. I’d torn apart their guys in about twenty seconds, and I hoped to see them eating their words – but Soulbiter and Screamsong had withdrawn to rejoin their comrades, and they were discussing something furiously.

“We’re being watched.”

Where?

“The windows. Eight pairs of eyes. No, nine.”

Never mind.

“You really need to think about how you phrase things, you know.”

I mean… forget about it.

“You don’t really want me to do that, do you? I’d have to obey, and…”

Enough. Tell me what the darkmages are doing. The magisters will be here soon. It’s time to wrap this up in a nice little bow for them.

“If… I think they’re – oh. Kastyr, it’s time to leave.”

I looked more closely at what they were up to. Muttering in low voices, using their feet to scrawl another symbol in the dirt. Something linking the three expended circles.

The faint azure sheen of a shield about them.

“Flood Boy, destroy that glyph!” I cried, pointing.

The faun looked at me out of the corner of his eye, followed my finger, then whipped the gleaming wine-curtain around as he turned so that it arced like a silver rainbow in the starlight.

Thruuuuuuuuuuuum.

A great gush of wine, ten feet high and moving with pulverising force, swept from the pipes towards the Six.

“Definitely not a fight we need right now.”

Less guidance, more information.

I watched with a little alarm as the wave crashed against an invisible barrier and fell into two, draining away into the dirt around them… but not beneath them, not where it needed to be.

“The eldritch they’re summoning – it’s pretty much a one-time deal, for one of them at least. It’s a… nasty ritual. Eyes of an ally.”

Eww. When I said ‘more information’ I meant in the useful, practical way.

“Well unless you have some cunning means by which to, I don’t know, de-eye them, we have to leave! This demon is a big deal, Kas.”

I looked across at the razor-fiend. Internal mechanisms were scratching away at the light frosting that held it to the bricks.

Thruuuuuuuuuuuum. Flood Boy hit them again, getting a little closer to them, the wave holding together a little longer.

“And again my good man!” I cheered.

“Too little, too late. This one will be twelfth rank or higher. Prepare yourself.”

Her tone more than her words actually got me worried. She’d never sounded quite like that before. As though something was about to be… a challenge?

I immediately drew out boundaries, joining my hands together behind my back then moving them together symmetrically around to meet again in front of me. Within three seconds I’d shaped a circle, inside a triangle.

Thruuuuuuuuuuuum.

And then I’d shaped a square around the triangle, and put a pentagon around that. One touch from a finger set all four shapes spinning. Only I could see the barriers, shimmering walls of blue force emanating concentrically around me.

I was ill-will-proof.

A shield-spell the Cannibal Six would need four rituals and minutes or hours to set up, with carefully-measured drawings, I could ball-park with my imagination and still have it equal theirs in strength.

“A bird’s watching us.”

A… bird.

“Yes, Kastyr, a bird, do I have to spell it out to you?”

I put it aside, watching what was happening.

Thruuuuuuuuuuuum.

It was easy to see how the shield they’d drawn up was weaker than mine, now that I’d observed the way the waves broke on its outer shells a few times. Closer and closer every time. Two or three more hits… Perhaps Flood Boy would break their defences before it was too late; perhaps –

No.

Jets of red flame shot up once more and a man stepped forth.

Nausea. Swooning sickness. It was hitting Flood Boy and the Mummifiers too – worse than it was hitting me – forcing the fey creatures to twist in on themselves, curling up on the floor into balls of confusion.

The new demon wasn’t anything remarkable at first glance: a bit of rich-man fat in the folds of his face, brown hair kept long and pulled back in the latest fashion. He was dressed neat like any well-off businessman or merchant, in a crisp crimson doublet and bone-white hose. Average height. There was a general look of disdain, disinterest on his features.

That look.

My vision blurred, making me see double, and I blinked back the stinging tears that filled my eyes. It was the same sensation you might get from smelling salts or a pretty-serious concussion. My knees were becoming jelly but I managed to keep my footing.

Something was clearly wrong with the shield.

“No, Kas!” Zel rustled to me mentally, sounding panicked. “The thastubabil is too strong for it! Beguiler class. You should have been doing the reading I set you!” Despair in her voice. “Now you’re fiend-fodder and I’m…” She broke off into sobs.

My enemies stood confidently behind this new demon, except the one staggering about, pressing their hood to their upper face in agony, gasping the name of Vaahn, darkest of dark gods.

I wasn’t going to be demon-meat, that was for sure. If they weren’t going to use this time to run, if they were going to stay and try to gloat over me, pluck out what they wanted from my remains for their diabolical spells, then more fool them.

My left leg gave out and I almost collapsed this time.

Drop on it all, I cursed.

The merchant-demon was approaching. I could tell because where I was seeing double I saw treble then quadruple until I had to shut my eyes almost the whole way, screwing them up just so that I could barely make out –

The blue glowing line of my pentagon – the shield-wall farthest from me – smoking away in contact with the demon.

It was getting closer. I was feeling weaker.

Quickly I ran down my list of options.

Again it was the riskiest that seemed the most likely to actually work. I could back-up, pull my shields with me, but playing defensively was dangerous in and of itself. To succeed, to take it unawares, I’d need to be unpredictable, which meant being active. Not on the back-foot.

The draumgerel had no way to escape the unrippable bonds it was in, even with its goblin captors out of action reeling in the dirt, but the kinkalaman was not so hampered. I could hear its blades as it scraped free of the residual ice keeping it pinned to the wall; the prone, squirming Flood Boy would be no assistance now.

A blue glowing square rippled, then evaporated in a puff of blue glowing smoke.

“Use the heavy hitters, Kas.”

I told you, I won’t do that. We’re not out of options yet.

“Twelve Hells, I’ll even call them by those stupid names if you want. I know I said –”

Zelurra, stop fretting.

“– bring out Mr. and Mrs. Cuddlesticks, bring out the Body Brigade, just –”

She was supposed to be my eyes and ears but I was forced to ignore her, focussing as the clinking of the razor-fiend’s feet told me it was running at me. I turned my head, blinking furiously, but I still couldn’t see it –

Then I felt the triangle-shield, still revolving around me, shudder with an impact. The kinkalaman had leapt straight into it.

I snapped my head around to face it, tracing its blur from the point I’d felt the impact on the shield, and smirked to myself. Its putrid name formed in my mind.

“Bar the flight of those whom you served,” I tried to say, communicating my intended targets and the urgency with a fierce nod of my head – “Agar ru khalis o rumez el grel kasond,” is the way the growl poured out of my throat.

It whipped about in an instant, barrelling towards the Six.

As the triangle-shield melted away and I looked forwards once more, I was startled to find I could see the demon now in perfect focus. Despite the fact I was squinting like someone had swapped my eye ointment for lemon juice I could somehow see it as it really was: a withered, yellow-skinned hag, her hair a blanket of crawling beetles, standing just a couple of paces away from me.

Zel was screaming in terror within me. I was close enough that I could see the hag’s eyes, white through-and-through, with blue veins criss-crossing the glassy surfaces. Her hands were raised to break the circle-shield. Break my defences and take me. Kill me, if they were being kind.

But there was no chance I wouldn’t be a bound thing like her within the week, an eldritch, just an undead one instead of a demonic one. Death would be no release, and that was what she was going to bring me. Put me at the mercies of those who summoned her and let them tear chunks of out me with their teeth.

No way.

I moved, then moved back as quickly as I could, wincing in anticipation.

Nothing about her immediate reaction gave me the impression she’d been expecting me to lean across my circle and stick the tip of my explosive dagger straight into the centre of her chest.

The oak-carved athame looked like a relic despite its inherently-disposable nature – it was essentially a one-use wand of fireball, with the charged effect frozen and locked into the blade-styled wooden tip. I’d liberated it from the possession of someone far more untrustworthy than me, on an off-chance I’d need it.

I hadn’t actually prepared myself for the effect.

The hag-demon blew up into a shower of blue goo.

The way these things were crafted, the charge was expelled along the length of the tool as it turned to ash in my hand, so I was left in the clear as the blue goo instantly engulfed everything on the other side of the street.

Engulfing the buildings. The road itself. My razor-fiend.

Engulfing the Six, including the staggering one moaning about his eyes, his eyes.

One darkmage at the back tried to run but my dripping kinkalaman hurled itself into the deserter, its edges turned aside. The deserter went down under the impact and they slid together in the blue puddle. The hellspawn began clobbering the sorcerer with the flats of several blades and didn’t stop until he or she lay there prostrate, exhausted and ichor-drenched, no longer trying to rise.

I drew a deep breath. The gamble had paid off, and my dizziness and weakness had vanished as suddenly as they had appeared the moment the hag-demon was obliterated.

I couldn’t help but feel a quiver of pleasure.

I’m alive.

“Flood Boy,” I called to the faun who was shaking his head and getting to his hooves, “fancy mopping up the symbols they’ve got left?”

He tottered a little closer. “My name’s Olbru, remember – and I’m five hundred, you know.” His voice was deep and rich, more like a dwarf’s than a gnome’s, which was surprising given that his stature was more-or-less the other way around.

“Oh, sure,” I said in a conciliatory tone, lowering my voice; “it’s just for the effect it has on these scab-brains whose asses we’re kicking. ‘Flood Boy’ just sounds right.”

He raised an eyebrow sceptically.

“You flooded them out of their sanctum. Their holy place, or unholy place, whatever. You did it with a bottomless goblet of wine –”

“Fortified wine.”

“Fortified wine! The weaker I make us sound, the more farcical we seem as opposition, the worse they feel the pain of their defeat. The admission of weakness is the intimidation.”

His sceptical eyebrow was wavering.

“Trust me.”

It wasn’t really like he had any choice, anyway, but I wanted to at least try to be nice.

Olbru looked across at our blue-spattered opponents, then back at me.

“I trust you, human,” he relented, his grin returning, “so long as you keep this kind of chaos up.”

“And try keeping your name to yourself, Flood Boy. I know these clods would love to steal you away.”

Soulbiter chose this moment to bunch up his massive brick-sized fists and take a step towards us. “You have made a pow-”

I listened to Olbru’s music for a few seconds before cutting him off with a gesture.

Then I waited for Soulbiter to sit up and retch out a lungful before responding, “You should appreciate that, old man. It’s not like I know much about drink, my lord, but I hear this stuff’s fortified.”

The faun went to go about his orders, sending out a new tone on his pipes and spraying a more gentle stream of wine this time, directed at the ground, to cleanse away their spell-craft. It was only at the last second I realised my mistake, and I managed to stop him when there was still a complete half of their sigils remaining – not enough to do anything nefarious with, but enough to prove they’d been up to no good.

Had to preserve the evidence, without being stupid, without letting them keep their conjuration circle intact or easily repairable. Not like they were going to get away with anything now, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.

“Wrap it up,” I told the goblins, who were now lying on their backs, their filthy, filthy hands folded under their heads and their legs crossed at the ankles, looking like they were wondering how long they could exploit the break.

“Wrap things up. That’s the second time you’ve made that joke.”

There was no one to hear it the first time. Except you, I mean.

“I’m offended.”

I’m offended how little faith you had in me.

“I knew you had it in you.”

I smoothed my robe down and crossed my arms, standing and watching as the goblins begrudgingly went to do my bidding. They left their parchment knotted around the quivering blob-demon and walked across to the blue guys. Within seconds they’d ushered the six despondent sorcerers into a single dense group pressed back-to-back, my blue-painted razor-fiend standing guard like a shepherd’s dog.

You can’t fool me. I could hear you weeping away in there. What exactly happens to you anyway? If I die when we’re joined, I mean.

“You can’t fool me. You were more shocked to be alive after that than I was!”

I noted how she avoided the question. She always did.

It didn’t matter.

The Mummifiers had the Cannibal Six in position and a new parchment had appeared in their hands. They started going to work, zipping around and around the six of them. They kicked up a spray as they went – the ground was soaked in ichorous wine.

I’m a bit disappointed no magisters arrived.

“They’re not here yet.”

What do you mean?

“I told you about the bird, remember? It’s been back and forth twice already.”

I suddenly realised what she’d meant: a druid. Or, at least, a druid’s familiar.

It didn’t definitely mean the Magisterium, but it was at least likely.

With my pulse quickening again, I approached the seething draumgerel. I gingerly pressed a hand against – into – the green slime that oozed like lime jelly through the gaps in the goblins’ parchment, and I bade it begone with another “kherem” growl.

All at once the sphere of parchment collapsed into a pile, having nothing inside to support it.

The darkmages were ninety-five percent wrapped by now. I stood back; they were still surrounded by the constant splashes, the two blurred goblins whizzing around them. Their foreheads and chins were covered, but between they were free to see and breathe and speak. The hoods were pulled taut so that their faces were basically visible, including Mr. No-Eyes. My new fiend still stood at watch on the far side of the parchment-maelstrom.

“Mummif –” I began.

Suddenly the upper faces of the captives were covered in the anti-dimensional, probably-made-from-human-skin material, and this quite understandably caused them some alarm; a chorus of shrieks and gasps broke out to punctuate the moment they lost their vision, accompanying the moaning of the nearly-unconscious actually-blind sorcerer.

“– you’ve gone far enough now – put a knot in it, goblins!” I raised my voice.

The two of them slowed then stopped, glancing cunningly at one another before approaching me.

I spoke quietly, “I, ah, thank you, Blodg, and –”

“No, Glodb.”

“– Glodb, I mean, and Graggag, I –”

“Gradagh.”

“– Gradagh, I couldn’t have done it without you.” I beamed at the goblins. To my partner I said, Thanks for that. I know how seriously you eldritches take your names.

“You probably would’ve been better off just clearing your throat in their direction than trying those names without my help.”

Are you having fun?

“No.”

You are so having fun.

I sensed her vaguely disgruntled silence, and smiled beneath my scarf.

I win, I gloated.

“And Flood Boy –” I called him over.

I shook his hand. I could have fit four of his fists in my palm.

“Good fight,” the faun said, and chortled with a guttural belly-laugh.

“You were just awesome.”

“This is very heart-warming –” Screamsong hissed.

“And you like them served piping hot,” I shouted her down, facing her where I could see her sneering lips and long, crooked-ended nose protruding between parchment-lengths. “We’ve been over this. Been there. Done that. Got the nightmare-inducing hook imagery. Keep talking – any of you – and we’ll just leave your nostrils exposed. How’s that sound?” I paused. “I thought so.”

I figured it would only be honourable of me to ignore the whispered “my eyes, O Vaahn my eyes”. That fellow clearly had no interest in commenting on the softness of my leadership methods, and seemed to be intent on spiralling into insanity as quickly as possible. Not unreasonable, really. He had just traded his primary sense in order to be covered in blue death-goo. I was pretty sure you could get a random street-urchin to cover you head-to-toe in blueberry juice for a grand total of about fifty copper, and it’d smell way better.

Then Zel broke her silence: “Let’s see if you win for real. It’s time.”

They’re coming?

“No – they’re here.”