He swam in and out of focus, and I did my best to grin at him, half-toothless, gums open and raw.

“Amd whab? Whab dim I do to you?”

He shrieked laughter. The darkmage had to be in his thirties; he had a squashed face, all his features clustered in the centre, making him look like he’d grown up with his head trapped inside a fishbowl. His hair was brown and shaggy, scraggly beard jumping around as he snapped the answer:

“What did you do to me? You destroyed my best friend! Melted him right down… Gods be praised you’re here, now. I’m gonna take my sweet time killing you, boy.”

“Destoy whoob?” I complained.

Why did these darkmages keep insisting I’d killed people they knew?

“Bladebuilder!” he hissed, coming close to loom over me. “Phraidon, Phraidon Garalaz, burned to a crisp. I saw it – it was the last thing I saw before that damned Killstop got in my way… You were fighting him. I saw enough to know what happened, Feychilde.”

I realised then who he meant. ‘Bladebuilder’, the sorcerer annihilated in Saff and Tarr’s awakening. Which made this guy the diviner the one who’d been wearing the clock-styled mask.

I looked up at him through blurry eyes.

“Cock-face.”

The kick he unleashed couldn’t been seen, not even felt – only in the wake of its passage did the strobing mind intuit the blow, sensing the pain at a great distance, the change in angle through my spinning eyes where my neck had been twisted, turning my head to face the other direction.

I closed my eyes, cutting off the nauseating spinning only to find that the darkness didn’t help – I was on my hands and knees, falling through the night, my gorge rising –

“Clockwatcher, thank you very much. I realise you want me to put you out of your misery, but none of the wounds you’ve yet sustained are likely to off you, and I’d like to take the opportunity to torture you, if I may.”

I knew he was looking around at the others by their silence, save for one who dared speak up: Shadowcrafter.

“You’re going to torture the boy? Slay him? Leave one or the other for me – it was his hand that sent me tumbling hither! Can any other here boast the same? Does any other’s need for vengeance burn as mine?”

“He captured you?”

“He cheated,” came the spiteful answer. “Now, at last, I get to gloat over his body, as he surely did over mine.”

A foot landed in my chest, then rolled me fully-over onto my back.

“Well, boy?”

I looked up at the bald head, the big nose.

“Shabow… cramter.”

“Yes. Yes. Good.” The smile glinted over me like an executioner’s blade. “I am your biggest fan, Feychilde.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Find out what makes him tick,” Clockwatcher purred.

“Oh, indeed.” I saw the shapes moving as Shadowcrafter bent to find an appropriate rock. “I like to start with the groin.”

I mumbled, thrashed against the incredible pressure pinning my foot, and felt the weight of another boot on my shoulder – someone took my arm and bent it against the wounded elbow, stopping my struggling, leaving me howling –

“Wha’ the Hells is tha’?” someone muttered.

“What?”

“That, there.”

“Oh gods.”

“I know what that is!”

I leaned my head to one side, trying to follow the eyeline of Clockwatcher and Shadowcrafter.

From the angle I was at, I could actually see it coming – I was on my back, and I could see the edge of the shaft leading back up towards Mund, the circular opening that had spat each and every one us into this waiting room of hell. It moved out from the hole, a shadow amongst shadows. A six-legged hunter in the night.

A pair of red eyes in the darkness, slipping closer across the dripping, pitted ceiling.

Once I realised what was happening, I would come to recognise that I’d been expecting it all along.

This was my time of punishment, and they were the first I’d offended. The first who’d seen fit to place a bounty on the head of Feychilde.

The first ones in line to collect on my life.

Termiax and Rissala.

“’S comin’ closer!” someone wailed.

“I know what that is – back off!”

I heard Shadowcrafter’s bark of frustration, Clockwatcher’s snarl. I saw them stalking away from me nonetheless.

Everyone could sense it.

I was its victim. This was my time of reckoning. All my overconfidence. All my power. Stripped away, to the bone. No special circumstance to save me. No god or goddess looking on at these events from on high. Just the deities below, their bellies rumbling with the promise of death to come.

The darkmages gathered on the stones about me, murmuring, all keeping a safe distance of twenty yards or more. Now that they’d parted and spread out, I could see Duskdown – Rath was still alive, his chest rising and falling, but his face was a mess of broken skin. He wasn’t so far from me. Ripplewhim was motionless on the ground between us, face down in a patch of jagged-edged rocks.

Temcar looked to be dead, but I couldn’t be certain. On the other hand there was Neverwish – Herreld… The poor dwarf was still face-down in the water. He wasn’t getting up again.

The mizelikon dropped down from the ceiling, and even where it should’ve been visible it simply swallowed the firelight, its smoky body refusing illumination like leather refused to soak up water. Its six strange, feline legs were visible as silhouettes, spindly appendages distending and stretching, allowing it to almost step from ceiling to floor in spite of the sixty, maybe seventy-foot gap.

Of course it had come for me now. Eldritch powers weren’t affected by the Inceryad like human divination was… They’d only be limited by their own ability, and thrown off by other eldritches. The leaders of the Cannibal Six had summoned this mizelikon to kill me right back at the end of Orovost, and it had looked ahead at my future, pulled along by the confluence, the machinations of the four all-powerful arch-diviners who’d had a hand in my destiny…

Following me here. Not only to the time and place I’d be powerless, but waiting, waiting until Rath was incapacitated, waiting until I was wounded beyond any ability to resist, to fight back…

It was smart. Smarter than I’d given it credit, for all my useless knowledge, all my previous strength.

Unconsciousness tempted me. But when I closed my eyes, biting my lip against the agonies wracking me, I was no longer dizzy.

The twins. They were there. Always there.

I would fight.

But how?

They said that your life flashed before your eyes before you died. Now that fateful day slipped through my mind, sand in an hourglass, memories flooding through the aperture of my consciousness.

Belexor’s pocket.

“Belly killed the new sh-shampion,” Meneda giggles.

Urinating involuntarily when my rat-self encountered the scents of the tavern’s hidden spaces.

“This is our moment of revenge,” Screamsong – Lady Rissala – snarls.

Fleeing the mizelikon up the street.

Nighteye… poor, poor Nighteye…

And –

The almost ascetic look of him, the unkempt hair and gaunt features.

The voice. Solemn. Serious. Implacable.

”You must grip the brand tightly. Do you hear me?”

* * *