I told the king about Cerele and Elrydea, and ended up threatening a few knights who insisted we should bring the old woman and the captain of the Starfall in for ‘questioning’. I already had all the information she could offer. Whatever dragon-bones were found on such expeditions would be dropped off in Mepheleve or Frimbrenka, a hundred or more leagues south. Neither she nor the captain could identify the men who came aboard to bring their bounties ashore – the associates of Elrydea’s master were humans, men of ordinary character and appearance, known to her only by a tattoo some bore on the backs of their hands – a black circle.

The king had been disturbed by this, but it was obvious from the unchanging position of many of the nobles that the main factor in their desire to ‘question’ Cerele was to satisfy themselves she was no threat. Subject her to pain and misery to be certain they were still in charge, that they could remain comfortable despite the terrifying news of a vampire in their midst for a century. They sought a target for their emasculation, a way to filter out their vulnerabilities, make themselves strong again in their own eyes.

Fools.

“Enough,” Deymar had said in the end, silencing most voices. “I accept the counsel of Lord Raz. I am more concerned with what this jarkar.”

The word I didn’t understand I later discovered meant portends. And I happened to agree with him.

Later on, in private, I told the king I didn’t much fancy the chances of his agents in Mepheleve and Frimbrenka, if they went digging for information. They’d probably just end up dead if they messed around with wrong people. And the last thing I wanted was to leave myself; I wasn’t going to risk the wrath of the twins like that. In the end I managed to persuade our sovereign ruler to let me send a few imps south, to see what they could uncover. I dispatched Oldbeard and Blandface, with Pinktongue to serve as a messenger, before finally finding my bed.

That following night, not long after I awoke, a wraith flew past my window while I lay there reading beneath a light coverlet.

I wasn’t thick. Or if I was, I wasn’t thick-thick. I knew what this was.

Coincidence? Impossible.

This was a trap.

The shadowy presence was moving just slowly-enough that I had chance to get dressed, get my emergency gear in place on my belts, before the thing disappeared beyond my perceptions. I left a hastily-scrawled note, and then, cloaked in my own wraith, I gave chase.

We were climbing the midnight air, cresting the cliffs within seconds; then my prey levelled out, coursing down over the fens. I could almost see it, the amorphous, purple-tinged shadow floating on the breeze.

The wind was less forceful out here, and beneath the clots of reeds and weeds there were still, silent meres, gleaming like ethereal sap under the starlight. Other sources of illumination were out there too, fireflies of some kind I supposed – but these fireflies burned bright emerald-green and winked on-off, on-off, drifting in aimless patterns over the marshes. I was surprised at the beauty I found in such a desolate landscape.

We penetrated inland, moving farther and farther from the coast that’d been my home these last months. It was strange, not being able to hear the sea, or even properly smell it. I’d brought the twins to the swamps once or twice, when I’d entered Etherium for supplies and Jaid had asked to come along – but I’d never before travelled this far from Telior.

Never under starlight.

We hadn’t gone twenty miles when the wraith I was trailing after suddenly changed course, diving – it sank down into one of the silvery, stagnant pools and vanished.

I was currently flying high, checking I could still make out the dark line of the sea on the horizon, and I almost missed my quarry’s descent. I quickly adjusted my trajectory to follow, then paused before entering the earth.

This wasn’t just a trap. This was the trappiest trap of Traptown. This was a personal invitation from the vampire’s master.

And it was someone confident, too. Someone who really didn’t care about my power, so assured in their own capabilities that I was simply vermin to be led into the net.

I wavered, on the cusp of chasing the wraith anyway, and it was only the thought of the twins holding me back.

I could die down there. I should go back.

I knew it for a fact. I wasn’t thick, no. I should’ve gone back, returned in the morning outfitted with every conceivable defence, and a posse of magicians at my back – maybe even Lord Orcan, if he could be persuaded –

But something told me that this opportunity was a one-off. If I missed it, tomorrow it would just be another dank, empty cavern – no wraith, no arch-sorcerer…

I grinned at myself. What was I so afraid of? Another confrontation? Why? I was the world’s dropping expert on threats like this. What right did I have to refuse the call?

I closed my mouth upon entering the water, and squeezed my eyes to slits as I penetrated the earth below. After thirty seconds of breathless, serene travel I emerged into the open brightness beyond, looking down into my enemy’s dwelling-place.

The cave was immense. It had to be, to house such a hoard of body-parts.

A lair of bone, a sunken fortress gleaming yellow-white. Walls of piled pelvises. Portcullises of rib and femur. Battlements, empty skulls leering. Pearly streets where the cobble-stones were hands and fingers, stripped of all the stains of their former flesh, seams filled with a ghastly gravel. The whole structure was lit by floating glow-globes, as though my opponent wanted his artistry exposed to view, longing to have his handiwork judged by his peer.

Of him there was no sign.

I sank down, admiring the arch-sorcerer’s imagination in spite of myself. There were gleaming towers of teeth, bridges of rib, flapping banners of skin inked with the sigil of the black crown. The corpses of creatures, too, splayed out like decorations. The withered cadaver of a gigantic snake, coiled loosely about the crenellations, hanging limply. The heavy carcass of a manticore, its furry mane reduced to thin grey whiskers, stinger-tail drooping. The remains of a vast dragon made for the ultimate prize, posed atop the highest tower, pale tatters of scales falling down about its bones, like a horrid sheet draped across a white statuette.

I studied the dragon in particular as I descended. It was big enough to encompass a marketplace in the ragged folds of its wings, and the sigil marked on the glistening pennants was brought into sharp relief: a real crown, shaped from jet, had been placed lopsided upon its long-horned brow.

I shuddered, and looked away.

Is that how big Tyr Kayn was?

I’d thought Ibb and the others had been exaggerating, at least a little, when they’d described Ord Ylon. No longer. It rattled me, to think of something that tremendous being alive. Of all the things to which I’d borne witness on this plane, only the smikelliol rivalled it in size. How had Redgate, an evil man by all accounts, brought himself to face down such a challenge? For the first time, I almost felt relieved to be away from Mund, from all that madness.

They’re going to have to fight five of them? Even bigger, even stronger? No thank you…

Though, there was every possibility that my actions here could impact that. If they were gathering dragon-bones – whole corpses too, apparently – and I could intervene, even slightly… Could my deeds in Telior make some minor difference? Disrupt the dragons’ plans?

“What are the odds?” I muttered to myself. “Cross half the world, and still end up with my foot stuck in the same damn drop-hole. Curse you, Rathal…”

If I was being honest with myself, I was clearly outclassed here. I’d never even tried to reach Shallowlie’s skill-level when it came to reforming bones into more-complex formations; I’d barely had cause or chance to practice.

But tricks were just tricks. Raw strength was something else. I didn’t care how many eldritches he had at his command; I wasn’t afraid. I had my shields, and my wraith. If the whole place came alive… un-alive around me, I could just withdraw. And if I could take Shallowlie – and I reckoned I’d have had a fair shot – I could take this interloper too.

Are you still alive, Min? What about you, Ly? What happened to you both?

As I came close to the macabre streets, peering into the shadows of elegant, nauseating archways, the roadway beneath me came to life.

I had no idea how many tens, hundreds of thousands of bodies were here. The very foundation of this bone-city seemed to be corpses too: I sensed a single shape of actual unlife beneath the street, and then within seconds the ‘cobbles’ parted and a whole humanoid skeleton emerged, its eyeless, staring skull rising first, purple pinpricks in the darkness of the sockets.

Its voice was a nethernal rattle, the fleshless jaw moving along with the rhythm of the words as if by ancient habit.

“Welcome, Lord Mortenn, to the abode of the Prince Deathwyrm. He will greet you shortly; he is currently afar in thought. Will you take refreshment, while you wait?”

I looked down upon the skeletal servitor with no small degree of alarm.

He knows who I am. And… Prince Deathwyrm…

I had a pretty good idea who that was.

I steeled myself. This meeting had been a long time coming. I was ready, if it really was him.

“Refreshment? Really.”

“We have water and wine, honey and berry, provided by fey eldritch. We have blood and bile, intestinal tract and –”

I waved a hand. “Enough! No, I don’t need refreshment. All I need is your master to –”

The metal voice interrupted me, drowning me out, an immense sound, echoing out of a throat so deep and wide that it were as though the cavern itself spoke:

“My apologies, mortal.”

I craned my neck, looked up beyond my barriers.

“I was otherwise occupied. You followed more-closely than I expected.”

It wasn’t even looking at me, but the translucent eyelids were sliding and shifting; I could see the amethyst fire of unliving irises there, burning in the dragon’s skull.

No. Not a mere dead dragon. The dracolich.

I could only sense it now that it was moving, a monstrous shape in my mind, expansive, beyond full comprehension. Was my failure to perceive it earlier a natural consequence of its indescribable pattern, or had my abilities really atrophied that far?

I didn’t have much time to think, nor the requisite coherency of thought. It was speaking. To me. The mouth opened and closed, teeth snapping with a sound like a million pairs of duel-locked swords. The giant, jelly-like tongue flicked.

The eyes finally peeled open, fixated upon me.

I did this to myself. I wrecked his goblin operation in the mountains. He followed me. He knew who I was, what I was, and couldn’t care less.

There was an awful heaviness inside my chest, but the silence expanded and I had to speak.

“W-what do you want with me?”

There was some relief with the burst of breath accompanying my words, but the tightness, painful fullness in my heart quickly resumed, redoubled.

“I? Want?” The dragon sounded bemused. “No. It is what you want, isn’t it? I merely permitted an opportunity for you to enact your innermost desire. Such is my role here.”

I shivered, unable to breathe or to exhale, floating there beneath him.

“I thought you would hesitate, tremble upon the threshold, but you never wavered once you bore witness to my domain. Why is that, Kastyr? What is this vehemence with which you hurl yourself into peril? Where is its heart? I would know.”

It was only as the silence dragged that I realised I had to answer. Somehow, I managed to shudder forth words.

“I-I-I’m trembling now.”

The dracolich laughed, and, discerning its tone, I fell further into shock.

It wasn’t mocking, wasn’t trying to intimidate me.

It was good-natured – almost friendly. Like a grown man, laughing at a toddler’s straightforwardness.

“No, do go on, little one. What is the heart of the champion? This I am simply dying to understand.”

The pallid lips peeled back in a sort of grin. Inevitably, it was a ‘take a closer look at the thousand swords that you may well soon die on’ kind of grin.

The heart of the champion?

“What… what do you mean?”

“You know full well. You are no cretin. What drove you to come here, risk it all?”

The Crucible… The dragons…

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

I have to help, if only in a tiny way.

“P-people are in danger,” I stammered. “If I can – if I can stop – save –“

“No.”

The flat denial – its draconic source –

I cut myself off instantly.

“There are many things we tell others, baby sorcerer, tell ourselves. Countless are the lies of the ego. They wear different faces, disguises, at different times. Only rarely will we admit to ourselves the truth. And here the lie is exposed, a nerve to toy with. Whose life do you save, pursuing my pet?”

I looked up at the monster, met its dreadful gaze in which the whole of Nethernum seemed to shimmer.

I knew the answer he wanted, and my throat seized up again.

I know the truth.

I mumbled the word.

“Mine.”

“Yessssssss.” The great head snaked down, the neck elongating beyond my previous estimation. The titanic face loomed. “Yes, you understand fully the import of your actions! You know that you have been weak. You know that you wane. Deep within, the Wellspring cries out to be filled. Even the darkness of the depths, Zyger of your nightmares – even that place did not dessicate you like this, this placid life, these mechanical motions. It only led you here. But you were not made to be a crafter, a tinker. You were made to be a fighter. A thinker.”

I looked away, at the fortress of bone that was everything, all around me.

“It’s not all just personal power,” I whispered. “It’s not about me.”

“Oh but it is. It’s all to feel good. It’s all that matters in the end. People do what puts a smile on their face, even if it costs them the skin and lips that cover it.”

I looked up at him, incensed suddenly. “Even if it makes them weep?”

“Especially then! If those tears can be beheld – oh, you underestimate the sweetness to be found in martyrdom even as you walk its paths. Ah, youth! When you look back – then! only then shall you see it aright. To have so much to learn… It is a wonder that you are my weapon, that the shears of such force might be so blunt… This reticence in you shall be the death of me!”

Was he right? Was it all just personal power, in the end? I saved people, and it felt good, it felt right, but it wasn’t the why. Money had been the root of necessity, at the start. Becoming a champion made sense. And the glory to be won… the fame…

But wasn’t that more or less how we all got started? We were flesh and blood, like anyone else, the same after our awakenings as before them…

For all that I tried to do the right thing, for all that I tried to be the model warlock, I’d never been a ‘good person’, I supposed. Not really. I’d gone through the motions, like the dracolich said. I did my best to keep to the tenets of the gods of the light, did my best to be a good role-model. It wasn’t because it was right, it was because it was easy. Easy to be that way, be that person. Even if you failed, people saw your intention. They let you down softly. It was easy, when you were trying to be good.

When they died –

When it happened, and there was no healing for it –

I tried.

But I’d failed, hard. More than failed. I gave up. I’d earned my share of hate, and then some.

I came here, into this den of death, against all better judgement, not because someone else needed me to – because I needed me to. It wasn’t a want, wasn’t an urge. It was me. I was selfish. A selfish idiot.

Watchtowers like giant guardians, separated by white lawns from yawning, temple-like palaces. The vast keep upon which my foe was poised. Immense, awful structures, comprised of millions, billions of parts.

Such raw strength, to command so many. This was beyond the ken of books, of other eldritches like Zel. Nothing was so powerful. Nothing could do this alone.

The vampire’s master was so far beyond me, and I would never catch up, never plumb such intriguing, awful depths. Because I’d surrendered. No more fighting, no more thinking. Crafting and tinkering, that was it for me now. I owned only two undead creatures… didn’t I? Two, compared to this… And this was just the tip of the sword he wielded! Where was the Queen of Moths? Where were all his other fey, his demons?

I looked back up, met the glistening gaze.

And that’s all I’ll be, in the end? His weapon?

“And for you?” I sneered. “This kingdom of bones? I think not. This is for show, right?”

The head dipped, nodding solemnly. “I had the time. In truth I was no more made to craft than you, but it is only fitting that I greet my guest in an environment suited to their nature. A city for a city-dweller, no?”

He’s no Aidel. No Graima.

He was greater in strength, of course – but it wasn’t just that. He was extra-dimensional in essence by birth, and a being far older than those liches, removed from the plights of mortalkind. He saw us primarily as a food source.

He designed this not as a way to welcome me. It was a way to try to intimidate me, no matter what he said. This was never supposed to be a city; only a charnel house of mind-numbing proportions.

“So… you fight. You think.” I waved an arm at the sickening surroundings. “Not one dragon bone in sight, save your own. And yet you know I know you’re a collector.”

“Ah-ha!” The dracolich’s laughter sent purplish fumes pouring out of the cavernous nostrils, blasting into my shields and then lingering there, congealing into clouds before slowly dissipating. “Now you are thinking again! But you forget – you know I know you are no buyer. You bring up this topic only to bring us closer to blows. I found what knowledge you seek. I see how you grasp with thoughtless hands at such secrets. I know your suspicion. I do know your heart, champion.”

Was he right again? Did I want to fight him? Consciously, that couldn’t have been further from the truth – and yet…

Did I come here to die?

The self-directed question filled my insubstantial flesh with chills – it was the first time such a thing had occurred to me, and the very fact I couldn’t answer it, couldn’t see the truth of myself… It was the most terrifying thought I’d ever had.

“Yes, I sought the remains of my kindred, scouring the earths for centuries, sifting the bones for those containing the power, the inheritance I needed. My brethren have played their parts, and the time appointed by Ulu Kalar nears, necessitating my journey to this plane. When my great-grandsire, Mal Tagar, dwells in my flesh, all but a handful of the broods will be reclaimed. The souls of most are mine already. I await only the moment of Return.”

Grandsire… Mal Tagar…

Hearing it straight from the dragon’s mouth, as it were, was something else.

“You really are Mal Malas,” I breathed.

The confirmation of my fears made me crumble inside. This wasn’t just an agent of Tyr Kayn and her plans. The skeleton hadn’t been lying. This really was Prince Deathwyrm. From the story-books. This was a dragon of Lovebright’s maker’s generation. Potent beyond compare in sorcery, before he died – and, by the looks of things, he’d come back no less powerful.

No, he was no archlich like Aidel and Graima had been. They weren’t even on the same scale as him.

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

The gargantuan smile made my mind up for me. Blades formed on my outermost shields, and I re-reinforced them faster than lightning, drawing them out into extended spears as they began to rotate –

Too slow.

A counterstrike of unfathomable energy speared down, a magenta lance so radiant it left an imprint on my eyes in the seconds that followed. I blinked, staring at the tatters of my shapes, my stars.

He’d stripped me of everything – every shield, even my circle – without a single outward gesture.

“Training you would be amusing, Kastyr Mortenn. But you – you are too terrified to contend with me, I think. I see it in your face. Are you too terrified?”

Train me?

I saw the black fumes coiling there about the nostrils. My hands were numb. The shapes, the spells deserted me.

I faced an eolastyr. I saw a smikelliol. I bore witness to the red eyes of Infernum staring down at us in the blackness.

None of it. None of it had been quite like this.

Jerkily, I nodded.

“Very well – a shame. You may depart, then. I am pleased we have had this chance to meet, speak. It shall not be our last; of that I am certain.”

You’ll tell me everything, and let me leave?

“W-why…”

“Why what, my son?”

“Why,” I licked my lips, “would you train me?”

“But, you are to be instrumental in the Return, of course! Ha!” The laughter was a short, steely roar. “Were you yet unaware of your destiny?”

“Your… Tyr Kayn…” I didn’t fully recall their familial connection. “She wanted me to kill for her. Kill the twins.”

“Indeed.” The eyes burned fiercely. “But to her I did not impart all the myriad facets of Ulu Kalar’s dream, just as I imparted yet fewer to her mother ere she left for your city. Such would break her, break all.”

“But not you?”

“I may not look it, but I am made of sterner stuff than she – than any of them.”

“Than Ord Ylon,” I whispered.

Mal Malas unfolded his torn wings then furled them again, a kind of shrugging. His harrowing smile never changed as he spoke.

“I guess your thought. Your ‘Redgate’ was quite possibly, at that point, the greatest native of the material plane to exist – anywhere. Ord Ylon underestimated him. It did not surprise me that he defeated my uncle, yet he would not have done so alone, I am certain. It does not matter, so long as the necessary roles are fulfilled, and I see now the meaning of that which before had gone unclear. The future is the same, in either case. I had no intention of ever answering the calls of Draem’s daughter, nor of ever aiding my liege-lord. I had a higher calling. Soon Ord Ylon shall be returned to us, in any case, and Nil Sorog, along with all their brood and the other chieftains of our kindred.”

“And who’ve you sent to collect their bones?” I muttered darkly. I was recovering my scorn in the wake of his overwhelming self-confidence.

“Oh, haha-haha-haha,” he gargled his vile laughter, “they make their way.”

Then the right foreleg reached out, a single claw used to point at me accusatorily.

“You should stop asking questions, if you intend to stay in your comfortable tower. Go create your baubles, guildmaster. Continue to lull yourself to sleep with your craven self-condemnation. Let your power seep out through unkept walls and into the ground. See how that serves you, when the harbinger has gone ahead and left you in the shadow of your doom. Even now it towers high above you, enveloping the sky. Before too long it shall shroud the sun, and ere you are destroyed you will fight blindly, struggle in my net, your own will a traitor to the cause. You do not understand how close you are to falling, how the blade beneath your feet teeters as you sway.”

I was back under Hadin and Renkos’s knife. I wanted to move; the outward paralysis wasn’t reflected by the inner turmoil, the contents of my mind reeling from the horror of it all, thoughts passing too quickly for me to seize hold –

He’s telling me to go?

Go!

But it’s a trick! What are his powers? How many eldritches dwell within him? He can see the future, just like that? He can see through me?

My eye was drawn to the jet crown looped over his most-prominent pair of horns.

What is that thing?

“Go-o-o-o,” Mal Malas hissed, “before your curiosity kills you. What would your brother say, if you were to lose another limb tonight? Would it amuse you both in the same way it would me? The futures are unclear as to the precise consequences. Could my curiosity kill you? Hm-m-m-m-m-m…”

I shook my head blankly, using the dull wraith-flight to drift back, away from him.

“I’m going,” I said numbly, still drifting away. “I – I’m going –”

“No,” Malas snarled, rearing up suddenly, splaying the wings in their full, decrepit splendour, raising his forelimbs, shoulders back and neck extended. “No, in fact. I have changed my mind. I see that it shall only augment the effect.”

I’d never beat my wings so hard; I twisted, propelling myself up at the cavern ceiling at an angle away from him –

When a force-diamond looped itself about me, the nuances of ill-will that had so often worked in my favour betrayed me, overlooking my terror, finding only the animosity in my soul.

Like Elrydea. For all that I fled, I wanted to fight him. With every shred of my will, I longed for his destruction.

Cowardice killed.

I collided head-first with the magenta barrier, and an incorporeal nature was no hindrance to the dracolich’s impeccable shieldcraft. I recoiled, dazed by the impact, sylph-wings fluttering – the top of my skull hurt, hurt so bad it felt like it’d cracked –

His shells dragged me back down to the bony street, trapping me there inside a tesseract of pink energy. Thanks to the wraith-form, I half-submerged myself in the bones by accident while I struggled to escape.

He ignored my futile resistance, speaking calmly all the while.

“You are so far from what we need. We all have it inside us, even the thought-shapers – but especially we of plane-shaping, and the flesh-shapers too. This confidence. We are immortal! But we – yes, even I! – we are all-too-mortal, are we not? Our skin may be impenetrable, yet the sword of magic shall slice us. Our skeleton may be the substance of ghosts, yet the greater spell grinds the bones of ghosts to unseen dust. What is your metaphor? Ah, yes. Yes, we are all weak; we all exist on a rung of the infinite ladder, a boot ready to descend, crush our desperately-clinging fingers. We all have to find our strength. We all must climb. Which limb?”

I stopped thrashing about, turning back to meet the purple gaze as the dracolich half-fell, half-drifted down to the low roof of a building beside me.

Courage wasn’t even a memory.

“No,” I whispered hoarsely, “no, please…”

“Which hurts the most?” he asked, reaching out, plunging the tip of a single long claw into my right bicep.

The pain of the mere physical injury, this intrusion into my body – that was enough, and I was still insubstantial. I gritted my teeth, growled at the itching sensation.

He had me pinned to the bone-street by my arm – and then the magenta fire burned along the metallic talon, nethernal sorcery bypassing the ghostly essence I was gulping at. Malas’s power was being injected directly into my soul’s substance.

“The wound? The knowledge of the loss it implies? The feeling of foolishness? The certainty that had you chosen differently you would still be abed, book in your lap?”

I had my eyes screwed shut. The wraith-form was failing me, stuttering out for longer and longer moments. I couldn’t tear free, not without losing the arm entirely. I wasn’t screaming, but I couldn’t stop gasping, panting, panic working its evils on my mind. I knew it wouldn’t achieve anything in the slightest but it was still hard to put down the urge to raise my loose arm, use my left hand to grasp the dracolich’s burning claw, prise myself free.

“Or the knowledge that you couldn’t? That you are fate’s fool? That it is your nature, that you cannot resist, can never resist, never rest?”

I moaned. The flesh was – it was tearing –

The twins flashed through my mind.

Mum and Dad’s funeral.

Jaid wore her little blue dress, under the trees in Yune’s shrine. An appropriate colour for one so young in such a place. That dress had long since been passed on to another family on the lane.

She had almost looked like Zel, that day, I realised. Years before I met the fairy, of course.

Zel. Zel…

I need you.

Jaroan wore his best tunic. I couldn’t remember its colour. But at least I’d found his shoes. I’d made sure he wore two shoes.

Goody little two-shoes.

Flesh… opening…

“Release yourself!” Malas snapped, a cold command. “I see your hate yet burns bright! I lower my boundary. If you would go, begone. I shall meet you again, in Mund.”

I managed to open my eyes, look up at my enemy.

He was right. The pink shell, it was gone.

“Release yourself – or the other arm will join the first.”

He flicked out a second talon from the same tremendous paw and lowered it towards my left bicep.

I screamed. Seeing the second talon, it was possible. Only because of it.

I ripped away, accepting it. Accepting my fate.

I tore free and I flew, moaning, moaning as I soared towards the ceiling, pursued only by low, dry laughter and the spattering of blood on bone.

He’d won. He took my sorcerer’s fingers, along with two-thirds of my arm. My favoured arm.

I entered the rock, and the pain lessened. The amethyst fire of his talon had done nothing to cauterise the wound, but phasing through the stone stopped the bleeding.

I held my breath, lingering inside the earth, blind, insensate. Disembodied consciousness. I just felt cold. As good as dead.

What good was I out there, anyway?

It had clung to me, and now it had finally succeeded in rending my shadow. I couldn’t ever escape. I could flee this place, but I’d take it with me. The curse of power. The doom of destiny. The dracolich’s mark. The Crucible, rushing down at my head like an avalanche of dragons.

It was too much.

I could stay here, I realised. I could stay here, right here, and when I pass out I’ll die, lost in the rock. No one would ever find me. Maybe not even him.

From out of nowhere, the memory returned. It wasn’t much – just a fragment of a shard of a thought. A voice.

Fintwyna.

‘Especially the children.’

I remembered the sleepless night. I remembered the horror and the passion of those early days. Where had the champion gone?

Oh, it hurt.

The chief pain came, not from the arm, not from the despair, but from the continuation of consciousness itself. That thoughtless urge inside me that would reject all my conclusions and compel me to go on existing.

I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. The dracolich was right. This place, this life – it wasn’t mine. It was a place to die as Raz, not live as Kas. Telior was just the graveyard of my own choosing. I might as well have stayed buried in the earth if I intended to remain in Telior.

Even if I can’t return to Mund, I can warn them. Tell Zakimel and Irimar what Malas said. I can make it untraceable, maybe. Use a demon to intimidate another I don’t own into carrying the message.

I can do something.

Resolved at last on a course of action, I moved vertically again, the sudden urgency of my situation thrusting me out of the stone and into the mud, into the marsh, into the awaiting night air…

Not quite.

The second I entered the bog, I recognised my mistake.

The blood had been stymied whilst I’d languished in the coldness of the earth, accumulating in my raw, ripped stump. In spite of the wraith-form, when I entered the water – warm, in comparison with the stone and soil – the blood flooded out of me. I felt it, a sudden dip in consciousness –

Swamp-stuff entered my throat and stomach as insubstantiality deserted me – I was drowning, twisting in the weeds at the bottom of the pond.

I experienced it. The terror of dying. Knowing I was going.

Lungs filled with wet darkness and dirt. But it wasn’t Nentheleme that was going to save me, wasn’t a prayer to Yune on my drowning lips. I no longer held hope, no longer felt free.

I didn’t let myself pass out, couldn’t. Life wasn’t going to be so kind as to let me go if I wouldn’t let go first. I felt the strength of Avaelar’s grip about my left wrist, my only wrist – felt him pulling me up, up, out of the depths from which I couldn’t extricate myself.

Not without the power.

* * *