JET 8.2: REVENGE

“Death is your certainty. Death is your ending. Will you go to an ending you did not choose? When will you heed death’s overtures? Only when you are too sick, too weak to do otherwise? No. It is the weak who fear death. The strong? The strong welcome it. Many are those who claim to be strong, and yet they will shirk their fate, balk at doom, blench and cringe and judder.”

– taken verbatim from ‘The Swordfaith Lectures’ recordings, Urdara 966 NE

Dreams and nightmares. There was no distinction. Half the time Jaid and Jaroan held me close when I returned to them, and half the time they turned away from me, silently begging me to go, leave them, cease inflicting myself upon them… But sometimes there was joy to be found when they spurned me, and sorrow when they accepted me back. Somehow I hoped they were gone, already far beyond the curse of my influence…

That didn’t stop me needing to see them. Should they have departed Mund, I’d find them – if only to ensure they were safe.

We worked with the stones in shifts, some as short as ten minutes. Everyone was weak, but it didn’t matter: together, we were strong. With the help of Herreld and his kinsmen we broke away our first big piece of rock before my next sleep cycle, and almost everyone joined in the tired cheer. It couldn’t have taken more than twelve hours – that was how I chose to phrase it when I congratulated everyone. Plus, despite being busy, two of the dwarves had been working on chisel-type implements of harder stone in their spare moments.

It had taken off. It wasn’t just my project now. Everyone wanted in. Soon I’d propose splitting our food evenly, assuming people were going to help, of course. Those who wouldn’t chip in could make do with a little less to eat, couldn’t they? And the rest of us would all be well-fed, more capable of labour.

I didn’t feel sorry for the highborn in here, who seemed to mostly comprise the loners still sitting on the outskirts, incapable of extending themselves in fellowship with the uncouth. If they were content to sit there aloof and wait for death, what would it matter if we took from their shares?

In high spirits I left the ‘toilet’ and went to ‘bed’, lying there, scratching my ‘beard’ and daydreaming before sleep claimed me.

Whether I was awake or not, the dream was the same.

Getting free. Getting the twins. Leaving everything and everyone I’d ever known behind. Even Xantaire and Xastur and Orstrum – while I missed them and always would, they weren’t even in the same league. It wasn’t my job to protect them, ultimately. But the twins… I had to act. I had to keep going, until I was reunited with them or I died, one or the other. I couldn’t abandon them to this world, not yet. If they were a few years older everything might’ve been different… I might’ve been less-willing to organise Mund’s greatest-ever break-out of criminals, but here we were, doing what we had to do.

To be free.

However, my lovely dream changed halfway through, nightmare tendrils reaching out, reminding me of the real consequences of Vardae’s speech – the tendrils stole Jaid from me, stole Jaroan – now when I escaped Zyger they were already gone, had already fled the city – I didn’t know which way they’d headed, and I scoured the countryside, but every time I thought I’d found them it turned out to be someone else, someone with a clue as to their whereabouts – I seemed to spend days, weeks, years obeying these dream-people and their recommendations, flying here and there on tired wings, growing increasingly desperate –

A hand, roughly shaking me by the shoulder.

“Kas!” Rath’s low hiss.

I gratefully pulled my awareness out of the nightmare, but when I opened my eyes and followed his, I almost wished I’d stayed asleep.

A full-on ghost was floating down out of the shaft, flickering in the Inceryad’s fiery glow. She looked like the ghost of a magister, her hair tied back severely, her almost-transparent body swathed in a formal robe, its folds like smoke rolling in waves about her as she descended. Any official Magisterium symbol on her shadow-clothes was indiscernible, however.

“Thou shalt desist,” she said, floating straight over towards the ‘toilet’ and the crew of darkmages dutifully clanging their hard, hand-held stones against the fault-lines in the wall.

“Oh, we shalt, shall we?” one of the lowborn darkmages sneered back at the ghost, his accent mocking hers. He was a young man and he stood straight, pausing his stone-on-stone hammering to regard her. “Why, what’re they gonna do with us? Throw us in Magicrux Zyger? Pop on back to your masters, and tell them from me that they –”

The ghost seemed to utilise a short-ranged teleport, simply vanishing and then reappearing directly behind the man.

“Thou shalt desist,” she said again; the darkmage did his best to whirl, shrieking something, but she put her arms around him, through him, and he dropped his stone.

Then he dropped his corpse, the body sliding down lifelessly to the rocks, slipping over the wet boulders and landing in the ‘toilet’ with a splash. She was holding something shapeless now in her embrace, an entity of shadow and light. The darkmage’s soul, being exposed to the corrupting influence of nethernal energies.

It screamed. The soul, it was screaming. We couldn’t hear the sound, but that just made it more horrible. We could see the amorphous mouth, locked in perpetual motion, a noiseless trill of utter desolation.

The final phrase was spoken slowly but with no delicacy, her voice a hollow monotone.

“Thou… shalt… desist.”

Then the ghost was gone, and the darkmage’s with her, leaving only her echoes behind.

As the sounds faded and everyone could see she wasn’t immediately coming back, dozens of voices exploded.

“What was that?”

“So we can’t even hit rocks without being punished further.”

“Gods-damned magisters…”

“What did he say to it?”

It’s over, I said to myself grimly, keeping my disappointment sealed up inside. Just like that, the dream dies.

I was feeling very bitter all of a sudden, so it took me a minute to realise the ghost had been speaking Netheric, and apparently only a portion of us had understood the meaning of her words and the archmage’s reply. I’d given away the fact I was an ex-sorcerer before I’d wrapped my head around it, but it was ever-so-slightly reassuring to recognise I hadn’t entirely lost my gift. It was just… being suppressed. It was a silver lining on the blackest of black clouds, but it was something. I couldn’t speak it, though, not without the appropriate creature in front of me. I grabbed another arch-sorcerer, and together we tested it – the language was something we could only understand now. Neither of us could get our tongues to break the planar boundary at will.

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The ghost’s a strange choice of eldritch guardian, I mused, moving away from the other ex-sorcerer and trying to puzzle it out.

Wasn’t it odd? An eldritch whose warnings few archmages could even comprehend… not like they cared much whether the warnings were heeded, though, I guessed. This was probably a cost-cutting exercise, using the type of ghost that’d mindlessly haunt the same spot for centuries…

Then it struck me. The thing I’d been missing.

“It’s just like them, isn’t it?” I growled.

I was mostly speaking to myself, but a bunch of nearby darkmages turned to listen.

“The Magisterium?” someone asked in an old, croaky voice. “Of course, young man. They would’ve never allowed it. I did try telling you all…”

“It’s not that.” My eyes sought out Herreld’s in the crowd, found him crouching, dejected, on a shelf of rock lining the wall. “They’ve abused the unscryable nature of the place. Diviners are taught that people condemned to Zyger are irretrievable, and it makes sense to them – but a five-man-band of dropping watchmen could accomplish it with ease… Give them a rope-ladder, and a sword each, and what could we do, really? And now… now this…”

I looked up at the circular disc of space in the cavern roof, the hole hanging over the centre of the pool, and felt the disgust creep over my features, the mask of hatred that had always been beneath the surface finally manifesting.

All the things I’d been angry about had been superseded, dwarfed into insignificance as time supplied context, unveiling the sheer incomprehensible depth of their callousness. It wasn’t overprotectiveness, or even greed – it was Evil in its heart. The kind of Evil only a collective consciousness could come up with, a guild that screened applicants not by merit but by their lack of conscience…

Once, I’d been angry that the magisters supported the system that made the poor poorer and the rich richer – now I knew that all along they’d known of Mund’s impending destruction and said nothing. Where was the justice, and what form could such a thing take?

Once, I’d been angry that one of their leaders kept my girlfriend from my side when I entered a city filled with undead – now I knew that this leader had twisted her mind, manipulating both of us, and said nothing for months. Where were the fines, the criminal investigations?

Once, I’d been angry that another of their leaders tried to get me and my friends killed in that same undead city – now I knew that Zakimel was just the scum on the surface, merely preserving the Magisterium’s far-darker secrets. Where was the truth? Where was the punishment?

“And now!” I repeated. “Now they show us how easy it would be! To send down a winged eldritch – they’re clearly not affected by the tree – just send one down, like, ‘Hey, Neverwish, you’re coming with me!’ and that’d be the end of it but oh no, that’d mess with all the carefully-arranged preconceptions, all the lies they’ve built up. Gods! Damn you! Damn you all!”

I moved aside and threw myself down on my knees. Ignoring the mutterings of the crowd in the wake of my rant, I started to cry. The twins’ faces swam in front of my eyes even when I screwed them shut, refusing to evaporate no matter how tightly I closed them, how far into the darkness I plunged.

I’ll sink, then, I said to myself. I’ll go into the water, and search for the way out down there. If I drown… better to drown than – what? Live here? Eking out an existence on the edge of oblivion?

No. I’ll move on, die the way I always knew I would – trying to get back.

Get back to them…

Do it, Kas. You can do it.

I drew in a breath, put my palms on the stone to either side of me, preparing to open my eyes and push myself up to my feet –

My ears caught the sounds.

“So you – you’re Neverwish.”

I stayed where I was, waiting. Herreld didn’t reply before –

“And that means ‘e is Feychilde. Told ya! So oo’re you, man? Timesnatcher?”

They was a flurry of sound – a crack, a number of swiftly-delivered blows…

I sighed-out my freshly-drawn breath.

Rathal… don’t take them all to pieces, please…

After a few seconds of listening to the animal grunts coming from his victims I found myself frowning, getting to my feet to stop him –

And when I looked I froze, open-mouthed in dismay.

Rath wasn’t winning. He was pinned, three of them holding him, and another ex-seer was pummelling him like a trained gladiator, socking him in the eyes, the throat, below the breastbone… The grunting was his. Somehow, he was still standing, still conscious, but he was leaning back against the ones who’d trapped his arms and waist, his head lolling to one side. He was almost spent.

“Sick… of… you…” the ex-seer started murmuring as he struck, struck, struck.

And Neverwish was already gone, lying face-down in the water, a black gash in the rear of his skull.

Ripplewhim was backing away from the others, stringy figures sliding over the rocks in the firelight, streaming towards him.

Towards me.

There was nowhere to run. Retreat was pointless. They were almost on us anyway.

Pain. I’d endured it before. I’d just have to do it again. Move into the beyond without cringing. Stride into the shadowland with self-knowledge.

I deserved my dues, after all.

I killed us. I killed us all. For all that I hated you, Emrelet, I joined you before the end.

A murderer. A darkmage worthy of the title.

I glanced over at the Inceryad-tree in the last few seconds before they reached me. The flames reflected in the narrow, twisted branches, in the wispy mirrors of the broken trunk – the crystalline abomination seemed to be laughing at me, fire and shadow dancing in its million smiles.

But I wasn’t one for just submitting, not like this. The champions and magisters had broken my will, but Rathal had restored me. I would fight, until my last breath. I was young, spry, well-conditioned by months of practice and battle. Sure, I was missing most of my tools, but I had to try.

I jabbed at the nearest one, almost open-handed, ready to clench my fist as the blow landed, but he was moving too quickly. The strike hit home but it didn’t matter; I didn’t get chance to follow it up as he slammed into me, knocking me down on my back and sprawling atop me.

Luckily, perhaps, I instinctively managed to keep my head tucked forward, keep my skull from splitting apart as my spine started screaming from the rough contact.

Then a fist hit the end of my nose. Then a foot hit my bottom row of teeth. Then something heavier than either struck the outside of my elbow.

My arm now felt awfully wrong and it was the adrenaline, adrenaline keeping me existing through the moments, only bit by bit becoming aware of the terrible damage being wrought on my body. I’d seen it done, agonies being inflicted – I’d seen even Tanra ripping the hands off her enemies to slow their spell-casting – and I’d done it myself – I’d wounded creatures before, hurt them like I was now being hurt. I’d been the one on the receiving end too. I’d been partially opened-up by the first vampire-lord I met, and fully opened-up by the liches of Zadhal. I’d had my left leg pulped by the weight of a fallen ikistadreng and I’d fallen from the sky.

But then I was a champion. There was always the possibility of magical healing, and I’d always thought that when the end came, it would be something glorious, even perhaps something worthy of song.

It wasn’t, and within seconds, despite all my vows to stand firm, I was already longing for that chance to submit, to give in, avoid this beating. I couldn’t breathe through my smashed nose. Snot and blood filled my throat and the pressure of a variety of wounds was bubbling to the surface, making the lid of the pot rattle and dance, my arms and legs contorting in a desperate attempt to protect what remained of me from the rain of blows, bring up a knee in the way of a savage kick, bring up an elbow in the way of a –

Using the elbow in defence was a mistake. It sang its own song through my lips, a squeal of such intensity that I heard it reverberating across the chamber, reverberating through my skull – my misshapen, almost hanging-off ear –

Something hard landed on my foot, squashing my toes, trapping me. I felt the bone in the ball of my foot crunching into a paste, but I could no longer scream, couldn’t breathe at all – they were hitting me, kicking me, and my eyelids started to flutter in anticipation of unconsciousness –

“Stop,” snarled a soft voice.

I managed to focus on him – the ex-seer who’d been knocking Rath around, looming over me, throwing the others back with expertly-placed thrusts of his arms.

A saviour? I wondered, mind blank. But who?

Now that the pressure was off slightly I managed to roll onto my side, and I coughed out the contents of my throat all over the stones.

“Stop,” he repeated. “Feychilde is mine.”

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