QUARTZ 9.8: I KILLED HER
“I am the bright light that leads the way. I am the courage to pursue justice. I am the humility that knows both right and wrong. I am Lord Light.”
– from the Kailean Creed
Gong! Gong! Gong!
“What’s them things?” a man shrieked just behind me. Similar cries were erupting from many a throat, several people nearby looking directly to me for an answer.
I ignored them. “Destiny calls,” I murmured to my peers.
To myself.
Death approaches.
Tanra was still gibbering, relating something now about how the window was dark. Spirit and Mountainslide were caught in a strangled silence. Ciraya’s sky-blue gaze was fixed on the eastern fiend, on the sack of unconscious heroes, and she looked angry more than anything else.
Ironvine was nowhere to be seen.
Stifling a sigh, I raised my voice to quell the crowd’s clamour. “Eolastyr! That’s what they’re called. Denizens of the deepest depths of the Twelve Hells. Twentieth-rank arch-demons, capable of laying waste a whole host of men single-handedly.”
The crowd moaned as one, pressing back in once more. It quelled their clamour, alright, but only by daunting them.
That hadn’t been my intention.
“You guys have really been through the wringer today haven’t you? Well, there’s still blood in you yet. Blood in me, if yon crones can get at it.” Excitement and nerves were bubbling up, contributing to the feeling of sickness, the discordant humming almost filling my skull now; I had to yell over it. “What do you think?” I went on, trying not to grit my teeth. “I bet I can bag at least one of them before I get splatted.”
“I bet two, Feychilde!” someone cried.
“Three!”
“Take the lot!”
Take the lot. Yeah.
“Why not!” I growled back. “Let’s show hell what we’re made of. Not just blood. Bone. Gristle. Stick in their teeth and laugh in defiance! Let them have rot.“
I joined Ciraya in staring east at the sack-bearing arch-fiend, reinforcing the localised shields without expending too much of my energy. I had to marshal my reserves in this contest. The four supreme demons were going to reach the arena sands in a few more steps, and when her tiger’s-paw feet touched the floor I would move, charge straight at her first – if I beat my wings fast enough, there was a chance I’d reach her before she could let her whip fall, and if not I would put Mr. Cuddlesticks right in her face, sacrifice him to give me a tenth of a second –
“Champions of Mund!”
When the eolastyr to the north cried out to us, her voice rippling down with a seething blast of hot wind, the storm itself quietened, as though she spoke with its voice. Certainly she was loud enough. The driving rain slacked off suddenly, almost dying away altogether.
Everyone fell silent.
“We come to reap what you sowed, and nothing more,” she went on congenially, less force in her voice. “You speak of your destiny? Yes, Feychilde. Our Mother has come to welcome you. She awaits you and all your brethren, in Hightown! I have awaited, and have done so since you took the life of my Sister – a fate you sought to make now manifest! You return to grapple with the wires which have drawn you across the barren oceans, do you not?”
She’s focussed on me.
“Those wires we have drawn so snugly about your throat. If you had known when you slew her, would you have still acted, still have removed her from her place at the game? If it pleases you –“
She’s afraid of me.
While she spoke she came ever-closer, and my reflexes screamed at me that this was it. They were all getting closer, not just the one we were all transfixed by.
I locked the last spinning star in place and burst into motion while the others stared like enchanted children.
My movement appeared to break the spell, over some of them at least. Nightfell straightened. Mountainslide spun on the air, seeming to shudder. I had no chance to inspect the others – I’d angled my wings to bring me shooting off to my right, towards the eolastyr with a bag full of my old companions, and I only caught the briefest glimpse of the crowd’s reaction.
I didn’t go far before I caught the crack! sound and, startled, let my wings go limp.
I was just on the edge of the group, not twenty feet from where I’d started – and all of the hell-queens were down on the sand with us, circling, perfectly equidistant. A revolving four-pointed diamond, gradually coalescing.
A crimson noose formed on the air between them. An infernal weave, and they were inside it. This wasn’t to stop us getting at them. This was to stop us escaping.
Crack!
Another dose of the lethargy.
I tried not to smile. They were taking turns, making sure no one got free of the effect. I followed the nearest with my eyes without turning my head, then looked back to see the next one as she entered my field of view. They all certainly seemed to have a lot of flesh clinging to their weapons. My shields popped, one after the other, as they neared us.
“Did you truly believe we would bring your friends here if there existed a single future in which you might free them?”
“Feychilde, you especially ought to know us better than that by now.”
Crack!
“You understood, before you slew her, surely? You must have, in order to accomplish the feat.”
I remember.
I remembered the contempt I felt. I remembered the black eyes running like hot eggs out of her broken face –
‘She would join me! Be mine. Be a slave.’
The next was speaking. “We are the Daughters of the Sinphalamax. We are never wrong.”
At last she passed in front of me. The one dragging Star and Wilderweird and the others came about, loping gracefully like the others, the minuteness of the motions of her limbs belying the hideous strength hidden within her frame. The gleaming sack of archmages was no burden to her, and as she skipped her poor victims slapped bodily into the bloody, rain-soaked sand.
Behind her, the weave grew in power, an immense dome of absolute indestructibility.
No way out.
“Kas!” Tanra squealed.
“You’re filthy hyenas, you’re never right!” I spat at the eolastyr. “Not once in eternity! You –“
Crack!
I fell silent, bristling; the nearest eolastyr left my sight, smiling benignly, and it was the next who replied gently:
“You could not be more wrong. We are the only clean beings in your city.”
She angled closer to me, closer. Their diamond was tightening.
“We will flense all your lovely precious things here, and dose you well before transit.”
Crack!
“We aren’t fools.”
Crack!
“Oh no.”
“If you could see it as we see it wh–“
I’d waited until the nearest eolastyr was at maximum complacency, strutting around me like an overgrown cockatiel, and then I lopped her head off with a single sweep of my arm.
It wasn’t the right demon, but I had to work with what I was given.
She died mid-word. My blow had gone a little askew, given the nervous burst of excess energy which accompanied the strike – but only a little askew. Five tendrils went clean through her, from just above the left elbow to the right clavicle. Her left shoulder and bicep joined her head, tumbling unceremoniously to the sand.
The emptiness in her spilled out like a drum of black paint had burst, disappearing in an instant, shadows forced into the light.
Three screams pierced the air, howls of unutterable disbelief, and the infernal weave gave the lie to their confidence – the shimmering scarlet barrier faltered, flickered and died.
A single flap of the huge wings gave me enough height to see the others.
Me aside, every single person here was truly paralysed this time – not just bewitched, but held fast, almost like they’d been time-locked while the rest of us flowed on.
“Not so good at dodging when you can’t see it coming, are you? You’re so finite. If only you could see things how I see them.”
Crack! Crack!
I grinned down at the impotent tigresses, and laughed.
The third of the remaining eolastyr didn’t even bother trying her whip, turning north-east to flee directly away from the crowd over which I hung – but not before I glimpsed the expression on her face.
Making something like her actually reveal her fear, for what was probably the first time in years, decades? Oh, it was worth every moment of biting my tongue.
She swung the glittering sack about her and then, with a sudden explosion of speed, she ripped across the sand.
Hightown.
I wanted to chase her and she wanted me to want it.
Don’t take the bait.
I turned to the other two instead. “So,” I said, “would you like to rethink your plan? Flense them, will you? Flense them?”
I added just a bit of the anger pulsing through me to my voice, the disgust and disdain edging my words.
It was enough to break their wills. If I could’ve caught up with them, I fancied I would’ve been able to bring them into my possession, but it wasn’t going to work that way. They split off in different directions, and if I pursued one, the other would return here and obliterate the whole throng of people just to spite me.
I waited for the miasma of the eolastyr to evaporate, then went down to see my old colleagues.
“Well, that was bracing,” I said.
“You bagged one, Feychilde!” a random woman shouted, a hysterical tremor to the thrill in her voice.
“Only one,” I grumbled.
“Kas, that was insane,” Tanra said. “How exactly did you do that?”
“I guess there’s a lot to discuss… Are we done here? Do they need help out there?” I raised my head as if to look over the walls, peer through them at the ongoing contest beyond the arena boundaries.
Nightfell shook her head. “Kani’s cleaning up. We’re needed at the Fountains. If you’ll head there, I’ll meet you –“
“No,” I cut her off. “You come with me. I need you, more than ever before. We need back up.”
“Back up?” Mountainslide rumbled, speaking for the first time.
“Yeah. Back up.”
* * *
Gong!
I was headed somewhere I’d never actually visited before, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a pretty good idea what to expect. Not the Fountains, where we’d provisionally agreed to meet up with the others – assuming they survived their encounter with the thing the eolastyr called ‘Mother’ long-enough for our reinforcements to arrive.
No… this was a place almost equally-dangerous.
The time-locked Hilltown streets we flitted over were eerie; most were devoid of life, the residents sensibly sequestered away in their red-brick houses, but some displayed running citizens robbed of all motion, so that it was a bit like flying through a three-dimensional painting.
The air was colder than it should’ve been, even to me, freshly returned from Northril in the wraith-skin; the sky was filled with unmoving rain drops that shattered soundlessly against my companion’s clothing. This was no late spring storm; it was more like a near-winter tempest. The dwarf had cut corners with regard to elemental wards but we were imbued with Mountainslide’s flight-spells, and when we tested our speed I was amused to find his aeromancy still not quite at Emrelet’s level, even accounting for the chronomantic distortions that made it feel as though we were coasting. Faster than Orcan, for sure, but…
Emrelet…
Even if I never really knew her – even if we had all been part of some evil plan – I still retained all my instincts, my unspoken drive to care about her, worry about her. There were two aspects to the truth. One was known for a fact by my brain, but the other felt like a wound in my heart, more real than any mere fact.
Does she know what happened to Emrelet? I wondered, casting my companion a sidelong glance. How can I ask without her mocking me for being a sop?
At least there was the prospect of outmanoeuvring an arch-diviner in a conversation, now. I was intending on taking full advantage of my new capabilities.
“What was your moment of no return?” I asked at last, after at least a subjective minute of interminable silence.
“No talking,” she grunted through the black mask. “You’re hard to wrap up now. You keep splitting the layers.”
“Are you going to keep pretending you’re annoyed with me? I know you don’t like the crown –”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
She was silent again.
“It’s not the easiest question to answer, I suppose,” I went on, feeling as though I were talking to myself. “I killed Mal Malas, with a little help from some friends. He took my arm, you see. Just before a fleet of dark elf ships destroyed Telior.”
Now at last I felt her unseen gaze fall upon me.
“Yeah, it was grim. I tried to stop it… I was too late. But it started before all that. It was… revenge, upon me. See, I killed a boatful of them –”
“You?”
She halted, rounding on me in mid-air, and I bent my wings to stop, face her.
“Yeah, me. They – see I was going to say, they broke me. But it happened earlier than that. When Em – when Emrelet killed Wyre, that night he escaped, you remember?”
The black mask tilted, nodding.
“I got the itch. I scratched it, right across Shadowcrafter’s neck, and… yeah.”
I felt it anew, the need to kill, the emptiness of the act.
You killed three magisters half an hour ago…
But – the boy, his soul pointlessly separated from his body –
“Shadowcrafter deserved it,” I finished bitterly. “They all did. Do. Will. But Emrel-”
“The darkmage you sent to Magicrux Zyger. You killed him.”
“Uh… huh. He insisted on smashing my foot. It just… it really ticked me off. Then – well, he was going to kill Rath.”
“Rath…”
“Duskdown.”
“I may not be able to use my powers on you, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
She sounded more offended than I’d expected. She bent on the air, arrowing uphill once more, climbing into the deeper clouds that lay ahead.
“So you freed Duskdown deliberately, then,” she accused over her shoulder as I fought to catch her up. “It wasn’t some mistake.”
“It was only due to him that I had a chance, that any of us got our chance… Neverwish too, you know.”
I thought about Ripplewhim, whom I’d last seen floating face-down in the water, miles under the earth. I could only hope his naive soul wasn’t trapped in some nethernal demi-plane down there, that the winds of the shadowland had blown him clear of the guarded regions.
“That’s how we knew you got free for sure. The third time Neverwish visited Starsight, Timesnatcher had a vision. He’s going to kill good old Rath, you know.”
“I guess they’ve both had it coming long enough.” I sighed as I came alongside her once more. “If they could both behave, they’d be oh-so-useful, but if they insist on having it out like children? Well… What can any of the rest of us do, really?”
“I’m gonna have to pick up the slack, of course.”
“Looks to me like you’ve been doing your part already. Any new reports over the link?”
“Yeah – from what I hear, you’ve put the fear of Ismethyl in Valorin. Care to explain?”
I scowled. “He got in my way. Stupid man. I almost killed him.”
“You took his hands?”
“It’s like it’s contagious.”
Tanra laughed loudly, and there was a new, carefree timbre to the sound, carrying her acceptance of my actions. The old Killstop was in there somewhere. The ease was back, the lackadaisical attitude that both frightened and appealed to me.
“Do you…” I began, realising I was dropping behind and putting on another burst of speed, “do you know what happened to Emrelet?”
“What was Zyger like?”
It was a strange counter. I repositioned myself alongside her, matching her velocity again, then glanced at her.
She refused to meet my gaze, the mask not tilting towards me even so much as a single degree.
She’s trying to assert control over the conversation, I realised. She may not be able to see my responses before they happen, but she can control the questions she asks, refuse to answer any of my own…
Does she really mistrust me so?
“What do you know of it?” I sparred back.
The answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, and when she did speak it was in a small voice, as though her chest were tight, her emotions barely in check.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Sounds. Splashes, groans. A million little bubbles popping. And sometimes… sometimes there are voices. Is it… is there acid?”
“Acid? Gods, no!” I considered how to put it. Did I want to divulge the truth to someone who might be unstable? To anyone?
But then, Duskdown knew. And I was hardly the picture of stability myself.
“Have you heard of the Inceryad?”
She sucked in her breath.
“Of course!” she moaned. “So that’s what it means! It’s an inverse Ceryad-tree? Oh – oh my…”
“Drains everything right out of you.”
“So how did you –“
“Thanks to the Cannibal Six.”
It was hard for me to process just how much I was enjoying being able to stun her with my responses. Her reactions were plain to read despite the mask, the tells in her voice and posture more than enough to tickle me thoroughly.
“I – the Cannibal Six?”
“How long do we have?”
“I don’t know if it’s long enough, but you should start at the beginning.”
I gave her the abridged version of events, condensing months into minutes, knowing all along as I spoke that she was doing a damned good job of distracting me from what I actually wanted to talk about. But she was right. She deserved to know. She needed to know. And I needed to tell someone, needed to let it all out, even if the brief summary could barely scratch the surface of the actual experiences…
We were traversing the frozen winds above Hightown’s tree-lined streets now, and the darkness had only deepened. On the horizon whichever way I looked, there was the thin golden band, like a wedding ring wrapped about the city, a distant reminder that it was still the middle of the day.
I didn’t have time to speculate on the nature of the interaction between eldritch magic and the Inceryad. I didn’t have time to fully-explain the guardians of the thresholds, the trip to Infernum. I didn’t have time to properly express my grief about Fangmoon’s passing –
“What are you on about?” Tanra cut me off, then, with a kind of glee that told me she was just pleased to know something I didn’t, continued: “Sol didn’t die.”
My spirits rose, but it was just a shadow of what it would’ve been if she’d reacted that way when I asked about Emrelet.
“She didn’t? She ran, or…”
“She joined the other side.”
“What?” Now I came to a stop, forcing Nightfell to halt, wheel about. “Sol, a heretic?”
The seeress just shrugged. “Come on. No dawdling.”
I started moving again, more slowly than before. “But that’s… they took Winterprince, didn’t they?”
“Glimmermere. Shallowlie. Netherhame…”
“What?” I exploded.
“… Brokenskull. Voicenoise. Dimdweller…”
I stared at her, aghast; when she fell silent, I said: “Are you quite finished?”
“For now. I don’t know the full tally, of course.”
“But they’re no longer champions? They aren’t – aren’t…”
Aren’t out here, fighting?
“The champions are gone, Kas.” She said it heavily, but there was no other outward sign of distress – she didn’t stop or slow or even look at me when she spoke. “The whole enterprise, it was doomed. They couldn’t accept the truth.”
“Oh yeah, the truth, that everyone has to die sooner because they might die later.” I laughed. “Well, the more the merrier. We’ll see about all that. I take it when Everseer –“
I saw her flinch then.
“– made her big speech – the champions disbanded?”
“You could hear it in Magicrux Zyger?”
What was that wry note of disappointment in her voice?
“No… no, I just got the summarised version…” I needed to backtrack; my initial goal of finding out what she thought had happened to Emrelet was long-since abandoned. “Do they still Gather, though?”
“I haven’t been to the Tower of Mourning since the last time I was there with you,” she said in a musing voice. “Irimar still attends, dispensing our counsel to those cretins too dull-brained to jump ship. Not many, Kas. Half of them are just mages now. The mage population… of champions, I mean… it saw a massive up-tick.”
“After Yearsend.”
She just grunted.
“You going to carry on acting like this? You still haven’t answered either of my questions. What hurt you, Tanra? And what in Celestium killed Emrelet? Tanra!”
I swirled about, moving to the other side so I could grip her with my actual hand; I took her by the clingy black sleeve and she cast my fingers off with a smooth twisting of her elbow and wrist.
“You’re almost impossible to hold still,” she moaned, continuing to look forward rather than meet my eyes, hurtling onwards in spite of my attempts to stop her. “That damned crown, Kas. That crown…”
“If it bothers you that much…”
I slowed to a stop, and, finally, I seemed to be getting through. With an air of disbelief, she whipped about and drew alongside me.
“If it’s the only way… the only way to get through, to get you to trust me again…”
I reached up to the crown and, praying my amulet would suffice to protect me from some sudden attack of the Magisterium’s enchanters – I lifted it from my head.
For a moment I’d been worried I wouldn’t have been able to do it, that the dark magic of Mekesta would’ve made it bind to my scalp, pull out knots of hair if I tried to budge it even a finger’s-width. But no. I laughed at my foolishness.
Casually, I brought it down before my face, turning it in my hand to examine its subtle runes once more.
“See, it does come off,” I said, mostly to myself.
I looked back to her, and that complete and utter disbelief was in every aspect of her posture: her face’s stillness; her trembling fingers. For a moment, I thought I saw the rain blur downwards a few feet, as though her control on her spell were still slipping despite my gesture.
“So, now you’ve got the upper hand again… Do you want to talk to me? Look, I’m sorry, okay? I did tell you I’d get you back.”
She cocked her head.
“You remember… ‘work damage control’…”
“Kas…” Her voice was sickly-sweet as she reached up a hand to her mask, then she pulled it off. “Kas, I’m so glad you came back.”
It was her, her oval face, her button nose. The eyes burning with a fever, almost like the first night we’d met. I couldn’t tell if it was an illusion caused by the weird lighting but I could’ve sworn she’d dyed parts of her hair white.
“You really did think I was going to help you open the way, didn’t you?”
She’d dropped me out of her timestream with such suddenness it was extremely difficult to follow what happened; her words were still striking my ears as her weapons started piercing my skin.
She knew exactly which dagger to use on me, which ensorcellment would bypass my defences. If I’d only been joined with a wraith, it probably would’ve killed me outright. As it was, the ‘ascended ancient’ funnelled enough nethernal energy into my flesh to keep me alive even if I’d had every drop of blood drained from my veins. The fact she left the blade buried to the handle in my forehead spoke to the fact she wanted to overstretch my internal resources, wanted to whittle down my reserves until she could finish me.
I had no way to count the other slashes, stabs, rips, tears – the blows were innumerable. They traced lethal vectors through my amorphous body with lines both searing hot and biting cold – the knives bisected my heart dozens of times in different directions, snipped my spine into pieces, burying pound upon pound of accumulated steel into my lungs, my spleen, my…
Less than a second. Less than a heartbeat. I was still in the process of reacting, sensing what she’d done to me, and then it happened.
The ineffectual tug. I felt it, perhaps in retrospect, as she tried to pull the crown from my fingertips.
I looked at her like she was mad, and she was. Her face was contorted in determination, but it was a sneer, an extremity of callousness to which I’d never before seen her driven.
It was a desperate gambit, a loser’s last chance at victory. The crown was enwraithed; it was at least partially fused to my very essence. Doubtless in her head she should’ve been miles away by now, the circlet atop her own brow, the guise of Mother-Chaos hers now to command. But instincts made my shields extrude formlessly from my hand – and even in the very same moment that the wards ignited I felt her resistance on the crown slacken away, the bitter rim sliding back easily into my unfeeling grasp.
She can’t take it.
I extended the formless substance and then the shield was truly there between us, a solid circle, pushing her away.
Never, ever before had one of my wards worked against her. Even that day in Wyre’s office, when she held me back on the brink of the abyss into which the hands of fate later hurled me.
She broke the shield, of course, chewing clean through the azure barrier with a flurry of strikes I couldn’t even begin to follow – yet the flow of my magic had never been stronger. The next circle was partially reinforced, rudimentary stars spinning, bubbling into place just as she got through the first.
Creating complex structures was still a slow process for me, and I was never going to get more than a circle-shape out in a situation like this, but it was enough.
Enough.
I dropped the crown back on top of my head, then gripped the handle of the knife still wedged in my brain.
“That’s… not… very… nice…”
I grated the words as, bit by bit, I yanked it free. I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment as it finally slid out, then brought it down to study it. The various hooks and serrated edges were nauseating, the dozens of individual sharpened points emitting a faint amber light.
I let go the handle, and the dagger plummeted along with the freely-falling rain. She dipped to a point ten feet below me, blurring down to catch her weapon, then snapped back into place once more.
I stared at her silhouette, backlit as a lightning bolt careened across the black skies behind her.
Gong! Gong! Gong!
“Look – you know I had to try to get it away from you, Kas. For so many reasons. You need to give it to me now. Hand it over. Before things have to get messy.”
I understood, perhaps better than she thought I did.
Never before. Not once.
“I needed her,” I said, choked. “I needed Tanra. Together – we were supposed to fix everything!”
She reacted like I’d cut her, shrinking back, recoiling from me.
“Do you hear me?” I only pushed closer to her. “Who are you?”
Then rage asserted itself and I was growling again:
“Nightfell! Who are you?”
“I…”
She had access to her chronomancy. She’d had half an hour to decide what to say next, and all she’d managed was that meaningless croak, a syllable that had lost all the sense it used to possess.
I tried it again, my voice invested with all my gremlin-magic, as loud as the thunder.
“Who… are… you!”
And when she responded it was in kind, a wave of echoes, as though a thousand Nightfells screamed the answer.
“I don’t know!”
Then she was gone, no blur, no motion-trail I could trace. She vanished into the darkness, leaving me there, floating above the deserted street alone.
And for the first time – for the first time, I regretted it.
Perhaps… perhaps I never should’ve come back.
* * *
I spent almost a minute, just floating there, listening to the Mourning Bells, casting about and trying to centre myself. Hightown hadn’t changed much. The same austere towers with their thousands of windows, the vast majority never winking with the flicker of candlelight, instead emitting the cool glare of glow-globe radiance out across the city. It was strange to be here, over the streets, feeling as though the place were empty even though I knew they were all there, teeming like bugs inside the walls, doing their best to ignore the incessant ringing that was the reminder: death is here, death is stalking the streets, and you might be next.
There were no demons within my lines of sight. The only bit of motion to arrest my eye was a group of hooded individuals turning off a major thoroughfare into a side-street; the six of them were wand-armed, but they were wearing ordinary clothes rather than robes. A local militia of some kind, it seemed. Not surprising that such would be required, given the state of things in Mund. I didn’t spend any time wondering who’d hired them. They were inconsequential. Bigger things were afoot.
Had she gone there ahead of me? Would she raise the alarm?
Was she really a heretic?
Was it even actually her?
No one changed that much. Not without enchantment.
‘You really did think I was going to help you open the way, didn’t you?’
Whoever she was – for all the time we’d travelled together since the arena, she’d been lying to me, the whole way. Baiting me. She didn’t know for certain how to get me to remove the crown from my head, but she’d had a pretty good idea because she knew me. She knew I’d lower my barriers to Tanra. The arch-diviner was my weakest link, the one person left amongst the archmages I’d trust implicitly. And that trust had been used to attack me, savage me – it wasn’t just the physical attack, her attempt to slay me where I floated, but the emotional earthquake she’d caused within me, opening a rift I had no notion how to close. I was supposed to be flying, supposed to be moving, supposed to be acting – but here I was, lost, adrift on the wind’s wild currents, struggling to pick up the pieces of my mind. Hopes and expectations slipped like sand between my fingers. I was no good to anyone in this state anyway. Couldn’t help the dying. Couldn’t fight the demons.
I couldn’t help my paranoia either, couldn’t fight it. I replayed the moments again before my mind’s eye.
The flinch when I mention Everseer. The disappointment in her voice when she thinks I could hear the witch’s words from Magicrux Zyger…
No. The disappointment in her voice when she thinks of the witch’s words in general…
She’s disappointed everyone didn’t leave.
She’s… hers.
Everseer has done something to her.
What had she even been expecting to happen? The moment I’d lifted the crown from my head, the future-lines must’ve come into focus for her – otherwise she wouldn’t have acted. But which future had she seen where she’d wrested the prize from my clutches?
You have Mekesta to thank for that, I thought – and it gave me pause.
After everything that had come before – after Lovebright and Tyr Kayn, after Henthae and Emrelet… after Redgate and Direcrown… Facechanger and Belexor… after all the other twists and turns, traitors and treachery –
I couldn’t trust. I couldn’t believe in Tanra anymore.
And, before we fixed anything else, we had to fix that.
I pressed my lips together.
Wherever you are – whatever she’s done with you – I’ll find you. I’ll reach you, Tanra. I promise.
Resolve finally flooding me once more, I sped on my way. It wasn’t hard to get a lock on my destination – even through the dark clouds the fires atop the thirteen roofs were impossible to miss. I had no way to be sure, but in my heart of hearts I knew –
I was following her.
Following her home.
* * *
“The Thirteen Candles,” I murmured, looking it up and down. It was only now that it occurred to me just how much the scarlet edifice looked like the Inceryad-tree. Sure, the gargantuan tower was almost ‘flat’ when seen in profile, just like a candelabrum, but from the angle of my current approach, coming at it head-on… Supporting the thirteen gnarled branches, the trunk of the tower was thick and sturdy, riven with vertical lines that could’ve almost been like those in tree-bark had they not looked so much like trails of dripping blood. It amused me to think that the place might’ve been constructed in the first place as some kind of testament to powerlessness.
The crimson-brown paint looked at once fresh and crumbly, wet and dry. It made for a truly macabre sight. It didn’t much surprise me that no houses actually faced the area; significant earthworks had been raised on the outer edges of the acres it occupied so that it was neatly ringed with hills, and the only windows facing towards the Candles were those from the lofty heights of distant towers. There were some semi-permanent markets on the outward hill-slopes, screened from the full, demented view of the blood-coated tower; places where people could go and still feel safe, trade and banter in defiance of the heretics, treading the banks of recently-trimmed green grass… But, from what I could see, the grass as one came nearer and nearer to the base of the Thirteen Candles became increasingly long and yellow, listless, then grey and dead towards the very foot of the tower. A malign influence had dried out the land, time-locking the very ground into some state of perpetual decay, an autumnal withering that never quite drew to a close.
Was there a door there, at the foot of the tower? It was impossible to tell. Heretics were never spotted on the grounds, but Netherhame had once said something that led me to assume they made all transit to and fro under cover, a kind of everlasting invisibility-screen. Hopefully my crown would let me see through their illusions, if they decided to sally forth and obliterate me, but I wasn’t banking on it. All of the windows were dark, even when viewed against the black coils of this terrible storm. Only the thirteen fires atop the Candles were burning, burning, in defiance of all gods, all sense.
It’s time to bring it to an end, I told myself.
I turned my eyes away from the tower itself, focussing on the thing between us, filtering my own shapes so that I could study it.
The multicoloured sheen on the air. The impenetrable shield.
Braided green ribbons. Interwoven red wisps. Entwined purple threads. The azure spells looked like mortar, pasting over the gaps between the extra-planar shapes, linking one to the other. The dome was immense, though not so immense as the hill-border would suggest, and in comparison to the Maginox’s pure-blue shields this was nothing, a footstool before a throne. Yet it looked stronger. Its forces came not from Materium but from further-flung, eldritch sources. My sorcerer’s-eye was refined now. The tesseract flowed in three directions at once, three planes intersecting at ten billion different points simultaneously.
Floating there a hundred feet above the ground, I allowed myself to fly forward through the rain, drawing closer to the shield.
By all accounts, all they ever did was strike it. Whether sorcerers of a more-discerning nature were ever applied to the task, I had my doubts. The Magisterium never sanctioned attacks on the place – attacks… Again, their presumptive, aggressive postures had betrayed their true intent: to obfuscate the real nature of Heresy. To maintain the equilibrium.
And whether a sorcerer bestowed with fingers of force had ever been sent here to plumb the depths of these wards… I thought not.
Gritting my teeth against the potential recoil, I let one of my sorcerous tendrils touch the shimmering surface.
There was no pain, but the instantaneous response was in the negative: I wouldn’t be able to whisk these shields away. My power was incompatible with the energy-source and I couldn’t convert it in such amounts, couldn’t even open a slice in it to collect a single cup of blood.
I lowered my multiple whip-arm, and spent a minute just hovering in the downpour, thinking through my options.
I could try to just touch the blue sections, I mused. If I can tear off the plaster, maybe it’ll all crumble apart.
I lifted one finger, one tendril, and brushed as gently as a painter, seeking to separate one layer from the next.
It was like trying to turn a page when it was stuck to the next one – stuck with glue. No amount of finesse would suffice to the task. Perhaps brute-force, if applied by a deity… I lowered my tendrils once more.
Or maybe I can bleed it out into another vessel…
I sank down to the ground and summoned Khikiriaz onto the grass beside me.
The ikistadreng lifted his massive black antlers and cast about, before saying to me dubiously, “Master? We are far from the battle, it appears.”
“Not for long,” I answered, and he stamped his hooves eagerly. “Keep an eye out. Could be heretics anywhere. Now, stop that, keep still. This shouldn’t hurt a bit.”
I carefully placed one tendril upon his neck and then stretched out another, this time seeking one of the red lines.
Rotate the colour… convert one force into another by folding it over in its shadow…
When I touched the infernal ribbon, distinct from the others, I somehow joined with it. And all at once I was filled with a horrible intuition.
I find myself hunched over a table. The room is gloomy, small – there’s barely any room to move around, but I’m used to it. It’s cosy, and, moreover, it’s mine. The dizzying array of gadgets strewn about the table are also mine, and somehow they are my speciality, my job. Each one is linked to a place on the plane, and the demi-plane in which I squat is linked to every single place. I know that I currently monitor nine hundred and forty-four wheels and cogs, whizzing and grinding, and that no one, no one is my equal in this task. He gave it to me.
I broke the connection, shuddering as I came back to myself, withdrawing the two fingers –
“Maaaaasterrrrr…”
Only a single instant had passed, but I turned to regard a bloated mass of bright-red fur. The behemoth was fourteen feet at the shoulder, almost twenty feet from nose to tail-tip, and his antlers…
If this had happened a week ago – even a day ago – I would no doubt have flinched, given the little twitch that might’ve proven fatal.
I had nothing to worry about. He was still calling me his master, wasn’t he?
I laughed my head off instead.
“Oh, Five… Look at you. Someone’s been finishing everyone else’s plates, hasn’t he?”
“Maaasterrr…”
“And polishing off the neighbours’.”
“Master!”
He leapt forward, throwing himself between me and the multicoloured shield, as –
Nightfell plunged through him, cratering out the side of the blurry breast nearest me with daggers blazing, wielding a thousand more colours than the wards that’d screened her from me. The invisibility she wore was less effective at obscuring her than the speed of her flight, and the weapon-trails gave the lie to both.
She wasn’t holding back at all now.
The steel rainbow pierced him through, and his forelegs trembled, gave out, sending him crashing down antler-first into the dead soil.
“Dismiss it or it dies,” the seeress whispered, hanging there in front of me, not five yards away.
So, it really has come to this.
I braced myself, and got ready. I’d never been one to back down from a fight, but this was one fight I never wanted to be having.
And it was going to happen anyway.
* * *
I did as she asked without complaint, waving the gigantic, dying Khikiriaz away from the plane with a burst of red fire. I’d already proven my point. The shield behind her – every one of the crimson bonds had faded, thinning from rope-width to finger-width. I might not have completely broken one of the wards, but I’d shown my concept was sound.
All I needed now was opportunity.
“Do you think they’re safe in there?” Then with a grin I raised the ear-bursting voice to the unseen masses, the insects scurrying behind these various shifting walls. “Do you think you’re safe?”
“They won’t come,” she hissed. “They won’t disobey. It’s just me. Your doom, Feychilde.”
“Afraid of what I might say? Ha-haaa! Think I can’t make myself heard?”
“I think you don’t want them to hurt Tanra.”
“But you aren’t Tanra. You only deny it so they do think you are. She’d hardly admit it; so you don’t either.”
She floated gently to the ground, and in the moment her boots touched the wispy grass, there were two of her.
“It’s just me,” said the second version of her, blurring into place next to her. “Just the two of us. That’s how this all began. That’s how it all ends.”
Mirror-image Nightfells. Both clad in the same attire, both wearing the same mask… Blofm’s insight-essence even showed the same parts of their bodies through the invisibility at the same time, the uncanny vanishing-effect swirling all over both of them in perfect step.
Well, now it all made sense. Why the shield had repelled her. Why she tried to steal the crown and kill me.
It took me a second to gather my thoughts. It was a nice touch, I had to admit – not swapping the identities, but both using Tanra’s.
Small wonder everyone had been fooled.
“I thought you were supposed to have a bow.”
“That was Tanra’s idea,” said the first. “Before Nightfell.”
The second: “We don’t like many of Tanra’s ideas.”
Back to the first: “Except the murder-instinct.”
The second looked at her double, and said in a surprised sort of tone, “I know, right? Who would’ve thought.”
“Not me.”
“Nor me.”
I looked between them. “Vardae.”
“Yes?” they both answered, talking in flawless unison.
“I am unbelievably sick of this drop. First –“
Celestium, I almost implied the twins became arch-enchanters for a moment! At least they could no longer read my intended words in my aborted sentences.
“… First, you have to realise…” I drew a shuddering breath. “I can find out which of you is which. You’re far too vulnerable.”
I started swinging the force-blade before I was even half-finished. Ill-will was an ally I could always rely on. It never lied. It would pass through the real Tanra leaving her unscathed while the murderess would finally, finally see justice.
But it seemed I betrayed it. I should’ve kept my mouth shut, should’ve restrained the urge to gloat: one of the Nightfells fled to my left, moving just in front of the unseen, razor-sharp shape hurtling towards them.
The other stood there, waiting for the blade to pass through her.
– oh no oh no I didn’t mean like this not like this how did this –
Pass through and bisect her.
“You think we don’t see shields?” the seeress beyond my range sneered. “A sorcerer’s planar vision is…”
Only then did she seem to realise that she alone had outpaced the attack. She turned back, watching with me as, partially obscured by the featureless mask, a red line appeared across Tanra’s windpipe, appearing almost black in the dim light.
“No!” Vardae shrieked, moving back in until the shield repelled her. “No! What have you done? Mekesta’s fool!”
The cut had been clean. Throat height. Not just her windpipe – her head itself had been fully severed.
Yet it didn’t fall – and neither did the rain. The wind had died away instantaneously, and an unearthly silence settled over the three of us. More than ever before, it truly felt as though we were the only beings to still exist.
I took an involuntary step towards her, unthinkingly bringing her within my boundaries, and thankfully she was no longer registering, no longer being repelled – or else in moving closer I might’ve split the wound open, caused her head to fall…
The ill-will in her had died with her – but Vardae’s power held the balance.
“Let it go, Tanra,” the dying Nightfell murmured. “Release… release the moment –“
“No!” came the shriek from the other one again. “No, she’s lying! She’s Tanra! I’m – I’m –“ Her cries became pants. “What’s happening to me? No, Kas. Kas, you have to save her! We need her!”
“Better that… I die, than she. I… I deserve this.”
The murmur was quieter now. The physical effects of the severed head were still there, time-locked or not. Death was inevitable, and I would be forced to watch as she – as her soul –
I killed Tanra.
I killed Tanra…
“You’re wrong,” I breathed, “wrong! Tanra! Vardae’s the one, she – she’s the reason everything’s like this! Don’t you see? If she hadn’t – if you’d been here…” I gathered myself. “A h-healing potion,” I mumbled, looking to the one beyond my shield. “A potion… Everseer, throw me –“
I didn’t want to lower my wards, not with the chronomantic effect already in place; if I caused some arcane interaction Vardae hadn’t been able to foresee thanks to my crown, and we advanced the moment even a fraction of a second – if we did that, then Tanra’s head could – would –
No. No no no no…
Then I realised I could just step back – step out of the way as Vardae closed in, let the heretic pour it down the champion’s throat for me.
I lifted a foot to step back – Vardae’s hand found a glimmering phial in a belt-pouch – and Tanra reached up, placing both hands on the sides of her head.
Her palms were flat against her mask’s cheeks, fingers at its temples. It looked as though she were considering removing the thing, but the implication was far more macabre. Despite her condition, the snapping motions of her arms were just as smooth and slick as ever. She was telling us that it was impossible for us to stop her.
She would take her own head off if we tried to help her now.
“Tanra, why?” Vardae howled. “We could have succeeded! We could’ve been as sisters!”
“You could… never… really be me… And I… you. You were so…” A brief sob escaped her. “… so cruel… Now there’s one… only one of us… He can stop you. He… he will stop you.”
“Duskdown will kill him first.” Vardae looked to me. “I can’t stop this. I can’t see a way. Take the crown off.”
“I will stop you,” I grated. “Permanently. I don’t care about Timesnatcher. Duskdown. I’ll do it.”
“After! After we stop this!”
She was still outside the shield. It was safe enough for me, but for Tanra?
“Last time I did that,” I growled, “when I took off the crown you almost lost control!”
“It’s a good thing this isn’t the first time!” Vardae looked truly desperate. “We know what we’re doing. Please.”
I turned and stared at Tanra, silently pleading with her not to do it, not to die…
I raised my hand, touching the rim of the crown, and lifted it just an inch off my head.
Tanra didn’t move her arms, didn’t end things. Maybe she too wanted a chance to see me, my fates once more laid bare, without my new prize atop my skull.
And the witch, the evil one, the architect of Mund’s destruction – the one responsible, the one upon whose shoulders the grief of millions ought to be brought to bear –
Vardae lowered her masked face, eyeing the dead earth at her feet… and vanished.