It was beginning. Phanar opened his eyes. He could feel it. For the first time since they’d arrived in the lair, true silence had settled. There were now only a few seconds left before Redgate cast aside the gigantic head in his arms, and turned around to face them – the demons were gone, but there was at least a hundred feet of distance between Phanar and the sorcerer – would there be a better opportunity than this, or would acting now just get him killed sooner rather than later?
He couldn’t. Couldn’t act. He had to feel. He had to say it –
He looked down, reaching for Kani’s empty shield-hand, but she was already holding it out to him.
He looked up into her eyes in surprise, then took it from her fingers, and nodded.
“Words will wait,” Kani breathed, “in this world or the next.”
He saw the tears in her eyes, mirroring his own.
“For us there will be no next world. I love you, Kanthyre Vael.”
He heard the ringing slam of the Ord Ylon’s skull as it was tossed unceremoniously aside.
He slipped her ring onto his left hand, and ran like the wind towards his doom.
He went in an arc, to come upon Redgate from the far side, heading for the boulders beyond the treasure-lake; as he darted he cast his gaze across at the sorcerer, at the others.
Redgate was shrinking back down even as he floated into the air – the wings and armour disappeared into the fabric of his flickering crimson robes. Then he reached up, removing his mask and throwing back his hood. He shook out his brown, sweat-soaked hair, and laughed lightly.
“That was, truly, worth the trip,” he called down to the dragon’s severed head.
Then the voice of the Sister of Wythyldwyn rang out. Its tone was cold and formal, but the terror couldn’t be kept from it.
“You th-think I don’t know what you are.”
Redgate turned in the air and looked upon her, his curiosity plain. “I don’t know what you are, Sister Vael. I must admit, you most of all your merry band intrigue me; it is you who most frustrates my inquiries… It is you whose life might persist longest – this will depend on the results of my experiments…”
“You think that I, I can’t comprehend you. That you’re somehow something special. Truth is, I’m supposed to say you could’ve been a shining light in a world filled with darkness. But don’t deceive yourself. Those lights… they still exist. You’re just not one of them. And no. You never could have been. These are the powers in this world that work against the likes of you. You want to kn-know what I am? I am one such power.”
“You sound scared.”
“I’m terrified.” Suddenly, somehow, the fear seemed to leave her a little bit. “That’s okay. I’m human.”
“Not for much longer.”
“Do you remember? What it was, to be human?”
“My dear.” Redgate floated closer. “I was never merely human, not really.”
Kani shook her head. “You put something in me, when you brought me down from that ledge, didn’t you?”
“I cursed you, yes. I suspected you might interfere too early, you in particular. It’s just an interesting element, a fragment of soul-poison from the shadowland, one of my de-”
“You should not put something inside a Sister of Wythyldwyn. Our bodies are inviolable. Necromancer. Warlock. Diabolist. We have names for your evils. You are not special. You are not above human. You are sub-human. We are…” She looked down at her mace. “We are permitted to slay that which is sub-human.”
“Where is Phanar?” Redgate asked suddenly, spinning on the spot up there in the air, craning his neck around. “Where are you, dragon-slayer?” Then, when the sorcerer couldn’t immediately locate him, imps started pouring from a crimson flame beside him, bat-like fiends flapping through the portal by the dozen.
Redgate gave them commands and the imps spread across the lair, but the warrior could instantly tell that his ring’s magic was interfering with their senses: the lair was a big place, with lots of potential hiding-holes, and only a few of the demons had headed in his direction. They didn’t seem to notice him whatsoever, even when he sprinted right below them, heading for their master.
“Dharikas,” he murmured, activating Kani’s ring.
“Has he fled me? Fie, Phanar! Come out; unless you intend to stay hidden whilst I take apart your frien- oooof!“
Phanar had no ranged weapon imbued with stronger magic than his hammer; despite the fact the archmage was floating ten, fifteen feet in the air, the warrior decided he had no other option.
He bounded by, moving as fast as his thoughts could carry him, and when he passed beneath the sorcerer he lobbed the hammer at him with all his might.
It spun, end over end, and the spiked point hit his enemy somewhere around the navel.
Redgate recoiled, making a noise like he was being sick; as Phanar looked back he saw the sorcerer ripping the magical weapon from his gut and holding its bloody tip up before his face.
“An unfair strike,” said the Mundian icily; he did something to the hammer, holding it out and twirling it – shadows seemed to consume it, and then the weapon was gone.
Great, Phanar thought, ducking around another imp-patrol. He’d lost both his spellbound weapons now – his sword was stuck somewhere within the carcass of the dragon, while the gods only knew to which plane his hammer had been consigned.
No matter, he told himself, reaching for his throwing-axe.
Undead kobolds started to rise from the rubble – he looked across as he ran, checking whether the others had noticed, and right then he saw as Ana raised her crossbow, two bolts loaded, strings poised to loose them at the sorcerer’s heart.
He saw her lips move, the double repetition, and he understood.
One charge she’d used to sink a shaft in Ord Ylon’s brain. Two she’d saved for this, the real threat.
Her finger squeezed the trigger and, trailing the same silver flame, her bolts whizzed towards their target.
At the same time, Redgate waved a hand lazily.
The bolts rebounded from the shield around him, tumbling like a pair of twigs from a dead tree. Their lights dimmed, the two missiles fell trembling to the glinting ground.
“I checked, the day we met, when I held your ring,” the sorcerer called in a disappointed tone. “There is about it not one thing to suggest your missiles can penetrate my shielding.”
He sighed, then waved a hand again as he slowly floated towards them – the shambling kobolds gathered in a loose formation behind them, blocking off any avenues of escape.
“You, Anathta, shall be my first. I shall attempt a vampire, I believe. Ibbalat, watch close; indulge your curiosity. I may require a little of your blood.”
The mage answered him with a wand of lightning-bolts, stepping between Phanar’s sister and the oncoming sorcerer. Every single one of the fierce sprays of energy he unleashed was scattered harmlessly across the sphere about Redgate – a sphere that seemed to cover an even greater area than it had when Ana shot him – yet Ibbalat steadily continued forward, placing his body in the way.
“No, Ibb!” Ana cried, grabbing him by the shoulder and jerking him back –
“If he volunteers, my love,” the archmage murmured, “it is of no concern to me. I can let you drink the Sister’s blood. That could make an interesting concoction…”
“Why won’t you die!” Ibbalat gasped, his despair and anguish palpable.
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Redgate was drawing ever-closer to them, smiling his murderous smile –
Phanar’s throwing-axe ricocheted uselessly off the sorcerous barrier –
The lightning-wand gave out its final spurts –
“Redgate,” Kani said, stepping up towards the others. As she moved in front of Ibbalat, Phanar noticed she’d retrieved her shield, embossed with its holy golden rose, while the mage distracted the enemy. “Don’t presume to ignore me. There is something I remember.”
There was a quality to the cleric’s voice that Phanar couldn’t immediately place. Even the archmage halted, looking down at her with a bemused expression on his face.
“And what, pray tell, do you remember, Sister? You must realise, you only sweeten this deed for me by prolonging it.”
It was the clarity with which she spoke, and joy; such joy he hadn’t really heard in her voice for so long… not since the prophet of Kultemeren told the cleric her fortune.
“I remember, the feel of the rail in my hand. The feel of the light. And I remember, the smell of Chadoath in his hair, despite the smoke of your city… I remember it all.”
Phanar stopped running, heedless of how close he was, how the imps were still relentlessly hunting him. He stopped, and stared at the cleric.
“I remember you, necromancer, burning in the light of a thousand suns. Oh, but that hasn’t happened yet, has it?”
A sense of incontrovertible change filled the air, suddenly tangible, candlelight in a long-buried coffin.
To his credit, the sorcerer reacted quickly, and not with his barbed words this time. From his current vantage point Phanar could see him clearly, if in profile, and his face frowned in sudden realisation. The atmosphere of change must have come to him as a sharp stab of terror, a certainty of danger: Redgate threw out both hands at her, the forces both seen and unseen at his beck and call, zombified kobolds and invisible shields and flames and fogs, all converging on the cleric… monstrous things loomed like hills inside the portals, silhouettes taking shape, getting ready to crash down on her…
“Are you ready, Deadgate?”
Kanthyre Vael, Sister of Wythyldwyn, raised her mace and then let it fall, smashing it into the hoard at her feet.
An opaque sphere of bright, buttercup-yellow light erupted around her, maturing into amber as it swelled into a vast dome, occluding everything behind it and beyond it, growing with the speed of an explosion –
It struck Phanar before he could even react, though what he might’ve done he had no idea – it was like a wave of hot wind that passed him by, allowing him to marvel at what it left behind in its wake.
Nothing. None of them.
Blood-coloured flames, amethyst openings – they guttered and evaporated. Kobolds dropped down dead again, falling into their own portals, as though their connection to the sorcerer had been severed suddenly. Whole hosts of imps were washed right out of the plane.
And as for Redgate –
He fell from the air, landing with an all-too-solid thump.
One of his hands rose weakly, the perfectly-ordinary sleeve peeling back to the elbow as he tried to gesture, open a doorway –
A single meagre line of lightning crackled from Ibbalat’s wand as he stepped forward, scorching the sorcerer’s fingers, slowing him by a thousandth of a second –
The still-not-quite-extinguished bolts that Ana had shot at him, lying on the stones with their silvery nimbuses, suddenly rattled, twisting about –
“Dharikas!” Phanar grunted –
Red flames appeared around the sorcerer’s fallen form –
The spellbound bolts found their trajectory, speeding off –
Phanar picked up his throwing-axe on the way.
In the end, Redgate was almost half-gone from the dimension when the ensorcelled missiles found his heart, bursting it in a fountain of blood that splashed across both the treasure and the hell-world portal.
Phanar sped up and struck his neck a savage blow from the left side, so that the head would fall into this plane. He wanted to stare at it. He would have to be certain.
Ana would want to look at it too, he suspected.
The murderer’s head came free at a single blow – Phanar had struck the neck a little too hard, given the imperfect balance of the throwing-axe when used for this purpose. He damaged the face, but it was better – far, far better – to be absolutely certain of the kill.
He only believed it was really happening when the portal Redgate had been summoning faded, taking away the majority of his legs and one of his arms with it.
The remains of the face had a strange, warring look frozen on its features, as the bloody thing went sailing through the air, spinning. A look of wide-eyed surprise, melded with the furrowed brows of intense concentration.
It was him. He was dead, for sure.
Air filled Phanar’s lungs without him feeling the sensation of breathing in, then let itself loose in an incoherent yell of catharsis and celebration.
He wasn’t alone – all four of them cried out and turned to each other, each of them wide-eyed, disbelieving.
His gaze met Kani’s, and her eyes were orbs of amber flame.
When their lips met, he tasted the heat of that flame; their eyes closed, and when they opened again she was herself once more.
“What – what happened to you?” he asked her huskily.
“I went to the Meadows of Mending,” she replied, and tears started to fall from her eyes then. “He… he did something to me, it would’ve killed me before too long, and I had to… I’m sorry I was so distant, I –”
“You did it!” he soothed her. “You saved us all.”
“I never saw a greater-dispel used like that!” Ibbalat cried. “I never actually saw a greater-dispel, at all, thinking about it, but –”
“Kani!” Ana squealed, leaping at the cleric, throwing her arms around her.
Phanar let them have their moment, embraced Ibbalat, thumped him on the back…
“Is it done?” the warrior asked his friend. “Truly, is he gone?”
“He’s gone!” the mage choked, half-weeping. “It’s over, Phanar! They’re both gone!”
“’Deadgate’?” Ana was scoffing, squeezing the cleric. “Bit lame, Kani.”
“I was pressed for time,” Kani replied, smiling.
“Now as for those moonfrost missiles… say I get them re-spellbound, call them Mundertaker One and Mundertaker Two… Would we be even, then, or – oof!”
Kani tightened her hug, then, grinning, spoke over Ana’s shoulder. “There are rituals I need to perform. His spirit might still linger, and Ord Ylon’s too. We need to be sure we send them on their way to Nethernum. With a bit of luck I can put them beyond the touch of even the greatest sorceries.”
“I’ll prepare some disintegration while you’re at it,” Ibbalat said excitedly, taking a few leaves of wane from his demiskin and shoving it into his mouth. “Get us through the rubble, get us out of this stinking place. If I can clear enough we might be able to fly out, and then back down to the edge of the Waste on a single casting!”
Ana had wriggled free of Kani’s embrace; now her eyes lit up. “I get to fill the demiskin!” she cried, ten times as excited as the mage.
“Gods…” Phanar looked around him, seeing it anew. “So much wealth… This is…”
“We go back to Tirremuir, buy up their whole supply of demiskins, come back…” His sister’s greed was like a second personality, a feverish thing that took hold of her at times like these. “We could empty it… Might take a few months, but –“
“No,” Phanar said forcibly. “We take what we can, we go back to Mund.”
“Mund?” Kani blurted, turning her face to his.
“You don’t think we should?” the warrior asked haltingly.
“No, I do!” the cleric replied, stepping closer to him and taking his hand. “I thought you might not want to… But we need to tell them, and we can’t trust a messenger. This is news we can’t let travel.” She looked around. “The poor kobolds…”
“Tell them what?” Ibbalat said, ignoring the kobold comment. “That he ‘sought a Returning’, or whatever?”
“Those whose lives were stolen you shall find for me,” the steel voice grates on. “Their bones await you. Your city will be theirs for the reaping, when the time comes and all is put right in the world once more.”
“Mund itself is on the scales, is it?” the champion asks.
“Your entire fetid empire.”
“There is much they need to know,” Phanar replied heavily, then looked down at the treasure beneath his feet. Ord Ylon had been trying to bury himself in it – were there other exits, other chambers down there? “There are bones, skulls hidden here, somewhere…”
“Oh, yes of course… Kani – can you find them?” the mage asked eagerly. “We can destroy them, can’t we? Maybe I can scry them out, now…”
“I could find them, but I won’t,” she said. “The Magisterium – they’re going to want to see this for themselves, aren’t they?”
“We cannot let anyone we do not trust come here,” Phanar said. “If a great arch-sorcerer could revive the dragon, or this… thing,” he indicated the remnants of Redgate’s corpse with his eyes, “we cannot afford for this to happen.”
“Then we… we bury it,” the cleric said with finality. “All of it. Let the Magisterium clear it if they want, but we do what we can now. Keep the secret of this place in our hearts till the grave.”
Ana was knee-deep in a puddle of gems and tiny bars of electrum; still, she turned and glared at Kani, clearly offended. “You mean… bury all this gold?” Her voice was low, incensed.
“Ibbalat.” The cleric looked at the mage. “You understand, don’t you?”
The mage looked between the cleric and the rogue, then sighed. “Ana –“
“I get it!” she snapped, returning to her task, pouring stuff into the demiskin. “I don’t see why we can’t just send Derezo to Mund with the message – it is his homeland, after all – or send Derezo back here while we take it, or whatever – and I swear, this much money, it would be enough to buy Mund, if we just… had the time to… and Phanar… needs new weapons… oooh, a dagger…”
Her voice continued on, getting quieter and quieter as her attention became ever-more absorbed in her meticulous work, assessing the weight and value of the items her hand passed over.
Behind her back, the other three were smiling. Phanar nodded to Kani and Ibbalat, who sat down cross-legged next to each other – the cleric was closing her eyes in prayer, the mage pulling out a spellbook.
Once everyone else was preoccupied, he turned away from them, so that he could view both the corpses.
There were hundreds of bodies in here – kobolds, dire wolves – but only two of them mattered.
Redgate. Ord Ylon.
He looked upon them again, and felt for the first time the lifting of the veil that had swaddled his soul, blinding him to the light of freedom.
Freedom.
The clouds of time parted and the starlight fell through between the worlds he’d walked. The sky’s seas rippled, the desert beneath groaning.
The shape in the sand. The dragon, looming over him.
Dead. Dead, at last.
Perhaps we both were prophesied, he realised, turning to look back at his sister. Perhaps we were always destined to do it together.
It might’ve been that her bolts – Mundertaker One and Two, he thought with a smile – would’ve done the job without him. Without Redgate, even. If she’d put both them in Ord Ylon’s other eye rather than saving them, put them in the dragon’s brain, who was to say what might’ve happened?
Bringing Redgate might’ve been a mistake all along, from every angle.
He sighed, watching her counting her coins.
But now, we are free. Both of us. All of us.
We swallowed our ghosts. We crossed the sand. We smashed the hourglass and remade it in starlight. We walked every way. We took every path. We found our future.
And we became it.
* * *