MARBLE 6.8: ALREADY DEAD

“When you carry a message, you are not yourself. You bear the thought of the sender. Most messages pass unknown from one mind to another, seeping through the cracks in the soul’s walls. Eventually no one remains themselves. All are a conglomeration of messages. An amalgam of conscious and unconscious meanings.”

– from the Orovaic Creed

Most of the heretics were grounded, surrounding us; we formed a hasty battle-line, and only just in time. Dozens of attacks hammered our weaves as waves of minions descended upon each other, biting and burning, screaming and spell-casting. Elementals and banshees and vampires and demons and giant golden squirrels were all wrapped up in a ferocious melee, rays of energy streaking through the fray to splash against invisible weaves on the far side. Gilaela was the sole unicorn on the battlefield, a gleaming, purifying presence whose mere arrival scorched my enemies’ minions – never mind when she let them get a taste of her horn’s power. I watched as she rode the broad back of a grass elemental, then leapt high, descending at a draumgerel and bursting it like a sore, the acidic goo just rolling off her flanks.

But this was no ordinary contest of archmages. We had dozens and dozens of magisters, applying themselves to the new task at hand with all their long-trained instincts, with all their lesser artefacts and premeditated magic. The heretics seemed to have even more mages in their ranks than we did – and they fielded as many archmages as the champions and the Magisterium combined.

They had the greater numbers, and they came through their portals or flew in swiftly on the winds of wizards. Their tactics were already decided, their placements chosen specifically.

We were fewer – Doomspeaker and Henthae had a portion of our forces held in reserve – and many of us were exhausted. Our mages were specifically prepared to fight a dragon, not a war.

And to think, a few hours ago I’d been worried about Dream interfering in our appointment with the heretics.

The battle-line lasted all of ten seconds.

Fires erupted everywhere. Up until now the magisters had been almost silent over the link, making terse reports, giving terse commands – quite the professional opposite of the champions’ operation, and it seemed there was something to what Jaevette had been saying earlier; it certainly helped Zakimel get his instructions across to his lackeys. Once one of the outer weaves fell and some of our force was exposed, however, wails split both the air and the telepathic space we all shared. We were flanked, overrun – we couldn’t cover enough ground with our weaves and at Netherhame’s shouted command we let them fade in favour of mobility. I moved in response to the screams, soaring towards and across the perimeter, attempting to keep as many of the lesser casters within the bounds of my protections as I could manage.

But already it was happening. Not twenty seconds after they fell upon us, and we were dying in droves. Swarms of insects went rampaging, devouring the odd defenceless mage here and there. Diviners ripped through barriers faster than I could make them, and when I was down to my square-shield I cut one of the attackers, almost accidentally, one of my force-blades taking his arm off. I didn’t see him get healed, but I did see their druids joining the assault, colossal crows and snakes and hounds and even a worm – two of them had grown to impressive stature, but stayed at the back in humanoid form, their eyes on the battle. Those would be healers, then.

Enchanters were appearing out of nowhere, delivering lethal strikes, then disappearing again. The lesser ones I could see, thanks to Zel, and at one point I managed to shout a warning to a magister – she twisted out of the way of the sword swinging at her throat – only for the grass itself to lengthen and harden in the space of a second, right beneath her feet, some druid piercing her with thirty overlapping green blades.

Blood. Blood ran freely across the grass, and this time the demons weren’t the cause. They were merely one of the tools being applied to the problem of killing as many magisters and champions as possible, in as short a time as it could be managed.

The earth rolled itself up towards us in sheets, slabs fifty feet thick, forcing me to dismiss or teleport the summons I’d already brought to the fight.

Loose dirt and body parts showered down onto my shields as the very ground loomed over us, towering high, pushing us back towards the rim of the newly-formed crater –

Then my girlfriend descended from the storm-clouds, a solid sword of pure lightning in her hand, and sliced the mounds in two, parting them like banana-peel to crash down on either side of my barriers.

“Up!” she shouted at me.

“Them!” I cried back, waving my hand at the seven or eight magisters clustered beneath me.

“They should have had the augments!” She sounded enraged. “I do not need this distraction!”

She swooped lower and gestured at them, and we took the fight to the skies.

It seemed the heretics were doing the same. We soon made up a cloud, a globe of targets strafing through the air over the heath, shields overlapping and contesting, pushing and pulling – some were plummeting, aflame or encased in ice, while others were already black crisps tumbling from the skies with their masks and rings melting. Still others seemingly hadn’t had their mind-securing amulets created by archmagery like ours had been – they were deliberately falling, landing with dull thuds on the ground, serene smiles or demented grins on their faces.

Our druids were tending to most of them – Glimmermere wasn’t even fighting, instead spending her time going from the northern side to the southern, to the east and west, just healing the wounded, defended all the while by Shadowcloud’s brilliant lightning-storm –

Then I saw a druid-magister near me tear his own head off. I saw Mountainslide’s lightning rebound upon him, almost stripping him to bone and sending him plummeting. It was too much for me to take.

I used my force-blades like a hammer to bat aside the sorcerer protecting a cadre of enchanters, and when they tried to go invisible, flee in all directions, the four diamonds I created from a spinning central ring trapped them in mid-air.

I didn’t quite know what to do with them, but that didn’t matter for long – they stuttered into visibility when they slammed into my force-lines, and that moment of visibility was, for them, one moment too long: a random gout of flame was directed at them from above.

I watched, mystified, as the four mages’ ashes drifted out of my diamonds –

“You’re velcome!” Em’s elated breath came to my ear, and she descended past me through the shields I’d constructed, striking down at the female wizard who’d first challenged us, Hierarch Thirteen, the one who’d thrown lightning at Netherhame, the one who’d been besting Mountainslide…

I should’ve taken the opportunity to put a shield around her but I was frozen there in the air for a moment – the ashes were still drifting about, even rolling upwards a little as they fell sideways, caught by gusts of spellbound air –

She killed them. Like they were demons.

“It… isn’t it what you want, too?” Zel asked in a small voice.

But I didn’t get a chance to answer her.

A male voice, young and furious, roared: “Feychilde!”

The sorcerer I’d batted aside was back, and he’d brought a friend.

Both were surrounded in shields, but the archmage, the shorter of the two, had a shield that didn’t flicker and fade between revolutions – an accomplished arch-sorcerer’s personal barriers.

Great.

I spread my force-walls between us and threw a few blades along its surfaces, cutting at him to test his strength as I retreated.

“Don’t run from me, Feychilde!” he cried, his Rivertown accent coming through as he gave chase. “You killed her – you will pay!”

I slowed a little, feeling confused.

“What do you care?” I called back. “I thought killing people was doing you a favour!”

He took advantage of my hesitation, spreading a titanic diamond around me, encapsulating all my shields.

How in the Hells…?

“He’s strong!” Zel hissed.

A thousand inward-pointing blades protruded from the diamond and speared towards me, stabbing deep into my shields.

“You will pay!”

“I never killed anyone!” I yelled. “I just trapped them –“

“You chopped off her legs, left ‘em there to be burnt to cinders! What did you do with her body? Did you burn her, like you burned her spiders? Did you laugh when you killed her? Did you?”

The heretic, from Firenight Square…

“You chopped her up – do you deny it? Do you dare deny it!”

The heretic was screaming, pressing forwards at me with his taller companion at his side, pushing me away from the heath – if I released my grip on my shield it would pass over me and I’d fall into his spikes, so I was forced to move with him –

“You chopped – her – up – do you deny it?”

“No!” I screamed back. “I chopped her up! She was murdering children!”

His shieldcraft was indeed strong, but mine was stronger. My square was trapped, so I made my triangle’s blades into scissors, and as his walls rushed in at me I sheared through his spikes, releasing my square –

I pointed my right hand at him, index and middle fingers forked, a v-shape to pin his diamond –

Then before he could react I punched out with my left, a single reinforced spike that split his diamond at the pinned corner, piercing the forces –

I tempted him into the obvious misstep. He crossed his own lines, trying to stop me.

I closed my left hand and withdrew it, swallowing his forces inside my own.

“What…” I heard him mutter.

I spun the directionality on the diamond and it flipped over, imprisoning both him and his sorcerous colleague. His reinforced circle-shield was now being speared by my own spikes.

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I could see beneath his hood, the way his piggy little eyes squirmed as they roved left to right, up and down – I could imagine the sweat on his brow, realising how close him and his buddy were to being shredded.

“You’ll regret this,” I heard him huffing. “You’ll regret it, when the dragons come!”

“Hear ye hear ye, the dragon just dropping left,” I spat at him.

“It’ll be back,” he sneered. “Go on, kill us, Liberator!”

My hands trembling, I floated there, paralysed.

Behind the two heretics I spotted Killstop. She was far to the south of me, dancing on the air beyond Shallowlie’s shield; the seeress fended off at least three other diviners as the sorceress desperately tried to slip past an enemy arch-sorcerer, his constant cones of wind barraging her, keeping her pinned down.

Past them, the woods were burning; figures were moving through the smoke on the ground, fighting amidst the snapping branches. A few magisters were desperately trying to put out the flames, while gangs of heretics sought to immolate more trees by the second, distracting them from the true contest.

“Kill us, or kill yourself!” the Hierarch’s ally yelled at me from within the cocoon of death. “If you won’t kill ‘em for us, take yourself out the equation, and let us get on with our jobs!”

Why does everyone want me to kill people? I growled internally.

Zel had no answer.

My will evaporated, and my blades faltered, their strength and keenness diminished. The heretic’s shields only blazed brighter and brighter as my resolve waned.

Then I noticed as the distant figure of Killstop froze. The three dark diviners were floating back, nursing their injuries – but there was another person hanging in the air in front of the seeress, a woman with her hood down, curly blonde hair loose in the breeze. I couldn’t catch what was being said over the clamour.

Another arch-diviner?

“Oh sweet Nentheleme,” I heard Zel murmur.

What? Who is it?

“E-everything tells me this isn’t going to go well, Kas…”

The curly-haired one darted towards Tanra –

They did not blur together in combat. They seemed to explode. The sheer amount of movements each was making was enough to leave a million after-images in the onlooker’s eye –

And in what seemed to be an instant they both travelled fifty feet – straight downwards –

I followed the colour-streak in the air with my eyes, only to see the two women locked in a fierce clutch on the ground.

Killstop was on her back in the weeds, and the heretic was standing on her chest, booted feet planted squarely in the girl’s ribcage.

Each of Killstop’s hands clutched a dagger –

Each of the stranger’s hands clutched one of Killstop’s wrists.

Going like a piston, the heretic-diviner yanked up on Tanra’s arms and thrust down with her legs, again and again, enough for the after-images to explode once more.

She was trying to rip her arms off.

All this had happened in the span of a rapid couple of heartbeats. Choking down nausea, I added my voice to the telepathic screams rippling across the link and struck the air with wings and wizardry –

Urgency compelled me – stupidity and overconfidence were its accomplices –

The heretic arch-sorcerer burst free of my diamond even as I aimed myself to fly past him. Eight huge, leg-like appendages, bristling with razor-sharp hairs, came from his back; five were black, three on one side and two on the other; the final three legs were bigger, grey in hue. A nimbus of fire began to coalesce in his suddenly-clawed hand.

He flew to intercept me, spraying flame through my shields, his friend just behind him, aiming a wand at me that produced a jet of solid green light.

I let them come.

I was already using my imps, but for my other flying eldritches I’d kept hold of my sylph and wraith, figuring they were too valuable to waste in this chaos. The wraith-form wouldn’t necessarily protect me against the heretics’ attacks, depending on their eldritch quality…

I had to go on the offensive. Even as they sped to cut me off, I brought Gilaela into the space just before me, moved forwards into her and joined with her.

Flood Boy, I thought, and could no longer remember the gesture to call on him.

He was gone – I’d never joined with him.

Now they were trying to kill Tanra – I could see it happening right there in front of me –

That brought the anger back, and when the demon-clad arch-sorcerer came close to colliding with me, my horn burst into brilliant light.

Our shields impacted, frazzling out, but my super-reinforced circle stayed active – the fiery claw he brought swiping down at my upper chest with all his strength was repelled. I swerved into him even as I continued towards Killstop, and my headbutt connected with his face.

The insubstantial nature of the horn meant that the heretic was not in himself wounded – it passed straight into his cheek, and pierced instead every impure eldritch he was joined with.

He recoiled, falling back into his ally. His demonic claw only faltered, flickering off and on, but his strange spidery-legs cracked and crumbled in an instant.

“No,” he gasped.

I didn’t want to stop – the heretic mage was putting his hand on the archmage’s shoulder, as if he was concerned – these two darkmages were actual friends – but I had Tanra to be concerned about –

Then a voice above me grated hard words, and it were as though the dark sky itself spoke:

“Take this as my apology, Feychilde.”

I went to glance upwards, as did the heretics –

Then Winterprince pierced them both through with a single huge spear of ice that formed and descended faster than a comet.

Pinned together by a twenty-foot-long, six-inch-thick icicle, they both plummeted, presumably very, very dead.

I couldn’t afford to care.

“Killstop!” I panted.

Together me and wizard raced towards her.

How much longer could she endure what the heretic was doing to her? I could hear her staccato screaming, hear the cackling laughter of the vile creature atop her –

Then Timesnatcher was there.

He came down through the three oblivious heretic-diviners who were occupied watching the macabre spectacle, and he littered the grass with their severed heads and body-parts.

But before the chunks of flesh could even thud into the ground he’d already tried to kill Tanra’s torturer a thousand times.

In response, all she did was back away across the heath towards the flaming trees, as though it were just a game, evading his strikes by skipping and bounding, barely using flight.

I’d seen these antics before. It was what Timesnatcher did to Starsight, when the tainted obsidian had subverted his will in the demon-tower. It was how the superior arch-diviner might treat the lesser, when assaulted…

The superior…?

And across the link I could hear the mutters, the shocked expressions:

“It’s her! Look!”

“Who?”

“Everseer!”

“Are you sure?”

“Everseer?”

My mouth was suddenly dry.

Everseer, Timesnatcher’s predecessor… She didn’t die – she turned traitor?

Although it didn’t seem that Timesnatcher was getting anywhere, neither did she seem confident-enough to retaliate against him, preferring to retreat. And it meant she abandoned Killstop.

It only took us a few seconds to arrive at her side, but Timesnatcher and Everseer had long-since disappeared into the smoke-choked treeline by then.

“Go after Time!” I yelled at the ice elemental. “Clear the smoke, I’ll help Killstop!”

“My very thoughts.” Winterprince nodded curtly to me then flew away.

“Killstop!” I brought Avaelar out and he gingerly lifted her mask, breathing into her face; I put one hand on the top of her head, gently stroking her, as I threw up some shields with the other. “Killstop! Can you hear me?”

The girl was motionless. I didn’t want to touch her arms, touch her anywhere, really, in case I made things worse. I just tipped a few healing potions down her throat and wrung at my hands.

“These injuries are grievous,” my sylph reported in a grave voice after a few moments. “Her arms stretched beyond their capacity, ligaments and tendons disintegrated – wounds I cannot heal. Yet they retain their structure. The internal organs, however, are in far worse of a condition. There is little remaining inside her that approximates its former shape and function.”

“What?” I cried. “But surely you can –“

I had to turn aside, form blades, to repel the dirt-elemental that had charged over at us.

“With the aid of yon philtres I have been able to stabilise her condition, in its last moments, yet unless an arch-druid attends her swiftly I cannot say –“

“Join with me again!” I barked.

I glanced over the battle, but the ground made a poor vantage point, and I couldn’t tell what the hell was happening. As I did so I sent out the telepathic call to Fang, to Sunspring, to Jaevette, anyone who was listening. Meanwhile, Avaelar dutifully complied with my command, hastening to my side; I waved my hand through him and started sprouting my wings, still crouching beside Tanra.

I felt sick. Everseer hadn’t been trying to rip Killstop’s arms off – she’d just been using them as leverage to better-pulverise the girls innards.

Still, we could be thankful she hadn’t just chopped her into pieces. Did this turn of events mean Everseer couldn’t kill her – or just that she didn’t want to?

“Timesnatcher’s down!” Winterprince roared over the link.

I cast my eyes over towards the treeline in horror.

Not two seconds later, a huge blue condor landed beside me, and Shadowcloud’s lightning took shape like a flickering, blinding elemental not ten feet away.

“Thanks, Glimmer,” I murmured.

“Go help him,” came the druidess’s voice from the tremendous beak, sounding rougher around the edges than I’d ever noticed before – less highborn, more… coastal brogue? “I got this.”

“You’ve got a shield around you,” I told her, then leapt into the air.

To my north, I could see that Em was still fighting the heretic-wizard, but she was being aided by Spirit or someone; an enchanter had created a number of duplicates of my girlfriend, sending each of them whizzing around the sky to disorient her opponent. Stormsword had the upper-hand over the Hierarch and she was driving her away –

Beyond her, even from the air it was impossible to tell. The battle had only been going on for about three or four minutes, and already there was so much loss of life…

I focussed my thoughts.

Timesnatcher…

As I came within fifty yards of the treeline Timesnatcher emerged, soaring out of the smoke, a body in his arms.

My first thought was Everseer, then –

No.

It was Winterprince, his armour evaporated. A short-ish, thin man in a torn, grey-blue robe; he had only the one boot, the other leg missing below the knee-area. His eyes were closed as though in slumber. He had a frown on his face, but he didn’t look to be in pain.

Blood was welling up through the robed form of the wizard, dripping onto the ground beneath the arch-diviner as he flew the body out of the burning forest.

It was soon apparent that, while there was enough left of Winterprince to identify him, most of his central mass was gone.

What was more, I could feel it.

It, not him.

The arch-wizard was dead.

Instinctively, I echoed the Hierarch-sorcerer he’d killed. There was no other word for it:

“No…”

I hadn’t liked him. In fact, as far as I was aware no one liked him. He killed Flood Boy…

That didn’t stop it from hurting, though – in fact it almost made it worse. Not that he’d ever made anything easy, but had anyone ever really tried to get along with him? To get to know him?

Now he was this empty sack of skin and bones – the back of his skull was missing, and its contents – and all I could feel was cold hatred, the sensation physically running up my arms.

Everseer.

A number of nearby champions flew over to regard the body. The magisters and many other champions continued the fight as, here, for a moment or two, there was relative silence, a sense of solemnity.

“He’s gone,” the giant condor said in a resigned tone. Killstop was asleep, cradled in her talons.

“Speed his soul,” Spirit said, uncharacteristically sombre.

“It’s time,” Shadowcloud said from behind his misty mask. He alone of them sounded furious, and lightning was congealing on his gloved fingers, dripping off to float on the air about him.

What does he mean? It’s time to kick ass?

But Glimmermere cried out: “No!”

The condor shape-shifted, and the elf-maiden with dark skin and seaweed-coloured hair appeared; she twisted in the air and threw Killstop at me, then cast her arms about the wizard.

I caught Killstop, satyr-strength helping immensely, and stared, perplexed.

What’s time? Does he mean ‘Timesnatcher’? Or – oh…

“Yeah, that’s my guess too,” Zel said morosely.

“You can’t!” Glimmermere was crying behind her shark mask. “Timesnatcher, tell him.”

“It’s his life or several others’,” the arch-diviner said quietly. “I can see that much.”

“Thank you, Timesnatcher,” Shadow said, his voice suddenly thick.

“Who cares?” Glimmermere burst out. “You can’t die…”

“I’m dead already,” Shadow replied at once, and I shivered, hearing those words from a fellow champion, a fellow Sticktowner. “Those things in Zadhal, they killed me. This…” The wizard gestured at himself, made a little tricky by the druidess glued to him. “This is just an elongated last gasp.”

“Laithor…” Glimmermere whispered.

“Imrye.” It looked like he was meeting her gaze through the eye-slits. “Yes, please. You have to do this – let me go. Remember what you said.”

“I – I will.” Then her voice harshened, as though the last sixty seconds had exposed a bitterness in her even she hadn’t known existed: “I have.”

“I love you.” His voice was harder than it ought to have been, like he fought to free the words; his anger-fuelled decision to give his life had taken the reins of his destiny, and even the three words he most needed to say before he left us were a deviation from his course.

He pulled off her mask as she pulled off his, and they kissed, a single, deep kiss.

Then without waiting for another word to be spoken the arch-wizard shot upwards into the sky, moving so swiftly and smoothly it looked like he was falling in reverse.

“Laithor…” The elfin-faced, ebony druidess stared after him.

“Come on, let’s get back to it.” Timesnatcher darted to the ground, arranged Winterprince’s remains in a respectful placement on the grass, then returned to us. “We can’t let old Laithor go out without a bang, eh, Imrye?”

There was just the right amount of sorrow mixed with the levity with which he spoke – just the right amount to make the druidess square her shoulders, look him in the mask, and give him a firm nod.

I glanced down before following the others, and shifted Killstop in my arms so that I could spin a shield about the body of the fallen champion – just in case. I didn’t want a heretic reanimating him or a demon gnawing on him. Even still, I felt the way the barrier trembled, as though it didn’t want to exist – or didn’t want to have to.

We’ll be back for you soon, Winterprince.

* * *