The first cadre of fighters hit the sands. The crowds cheered the heroes and jeered at the villains. Lorgno the Lifestealer was there, would you believe it, arrayed in the fine gold armour and heavy-looking crown marking her as today’s Battle-Princess, one of the main good-guys in the event. The children screamed hardest when her name was announced, and when her signature wavy-bladed sword was raised high to the crowds in salute, Bor’s kids leapt to their feet as one, baying like wolves at a full moon. He couldn’t quite hide his smile, even from himself.
They always made him feel better. Feel closer to what he regarded as his true self. Most people got the impression he was thick, that he wasn’t capable of introspection, wasn’t interested in it. He allowed that. He wanted that. His true self – it was stupid. An animal, flesh and blood and instinct. It was like a warm bath he could sink into and forget the cold, windy world above…
Warm bath.
That brought its own Tanra-related imagery screaming back into the forefront of his brain.
Enough!
The word imbued with overwhelming psychic force, the single straightforward concept that’d been capable of silencing and subduing a hundred screaming inkatra-heads in the last month – it glanced off his mind like a wood-tipped arrow from a burnished breastplate. You couldn’t shoot an arrow at yourself, after all, even if you were the best bowman in the world.
Lorgno charged her three foes, swinging wildly, a style of attack she would never use in the real games. In the here and now, she knew none of her big, burly opponents were actually going to cut her with their spears. She performed a dazzling dance in the midst of the trio, parrying multiple mid-speed strikes, a show of skill which was impressive despite its obviously-rehearsed nature.
If this was for real, she would’ve won, Bor had little doubt. But she wouldn’t have let them encircle her like that – never mind jumping into the middle of them.
When she cut the men’s hands off, the actions were quick and clean, stumps quickly hidden inside clothing to avoid depicting anything visceral. The severed body parts wriggled and waved, crawling finger by finger through the sand, to great comedic effect. He didn’t need his enchanter’s-eye to see through the glamour. Everyone knew it was fakery, even the kids, but they all played along with the illusion. The next time they saw the three burly gladiators portraying Lorgno’s enemies, the reappearance of their hands would be played off as the result of healing… and the show would go on, as it always did.
“You mind if I sit here?” a dry, female voice drawled.
He turned his head in surprise – psychics were rarely taken unawares – but when he saw who it was, he remembered her voice, and understood. The skinny, tattoo-spattered magister might have undergone the warding regimens – her mind was veiled from him, if not quite completely hidden. At the back of his brain, he’d been feeling the discomfort of those who’d spotted her, those who’d moved aside for her to pass.
Ciraya – that was her name. The girl who’d fought the eolastyr with them at Yearsend, when it claimed her mentor’s body. The girl who’d stood in the arch-demon’s face and fearlessly tried to draw out the infernal whip… for all the good it’d done them.
Bor looked up into her cool blue eyes; even the kids glanced over in surprise at the shaven-headed sorceress before returning their attention to the arena-sands.
“Good,” Ciraya said, and before he could actually answer she was spinning about and perching beside him, barely putting her backside on the huge shelf of stone. The sleeves of her black robe hung almost to the ground when she was standing; now their folds spread like dark webs across the pale rock.
“You not get a ticket?” he asked quietly, smiling at her.
“This is my ticket,” she replied, looking down at the arena floor and not gesturing at all, leaving him to read the implication of her inaction.
Her very presence. What she was. The Magisterium wheel on her chest, circle and spokes depicted as long femur bones.
“Here on official business? I –”
“I know who you are, you know.”
Her interruption was an emotionless croak, soft enough to carry only to his ears.
He felt his eyes narrow, and he wrapped an aura of ignorance about himself and the magister. No one was going to eavesdrop on this conversation, be it accidentally or on purpose.
“What do you want with me?” he asked huskily.
“Nothing,” Ciraya replied, sounding amused now. “I’m just saying it so you can relax.”
He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t quite feel relaxed.
“You aren’t supposed to know who I am,” he said, not quite capable of removing the surliness from his voice. “You –”
“Special Investigations privileges.” She turned to him now and smiled, an ugly little smile. “They’re even less inclined than usual to wipe champions’ identities from my head. And you’re one of the top champions in the city, now – top of your class, since Glancefall…”
Thankfully she didn’t try to put what’d happened to the poor man into words. Just another victim of the insanity gripping the city.
“I’m chief-enchanter, I guess,” he replied. “That shouldn’t mean –”
“After what happened with Killstop – your relationship with her… Henthae didn’t trust you. Even less than she trusts me. The truth is…” The sorceress didn’t quite sigh, but, all the same, she expelled some air through her painted lips while wearing a sour expression. “The truth is, you’re not the only one. There’s been ‘too many damn debacles’ involving the champions.”
He frowned while she imitated her superior’s smug voice.
Why is she giving away secrets like this?
He could find out, if he broke into her mind. The defences were strong, but he could shatter them, draw out the truth…
Or was that the trap? Have him assault an official agent of the Magisterium, then bring him in on trumped-up charges?
He shook his head. Better to ask the question, straight-up, than pull the answers from her head.
“Why are you tellin’ me this?”
“I’m just being honest.” The girl scowled at him. “Take it or leave it as you like.”
“No – I mean… Thanks.” He couldn’t quite figure her out. “So you’re here –”
“I got a friend who gets visions for a living. She said Lorgno would fight in the kids’ games, and I didn’t believe her. She was right. She was actually right.”
“So you ain’t here to do any arresting.”
She dipped her head in confirmation, her eyes not moving from the sands.
“Well, why the robe, then?”
“Why not?” she drawled. “No ticket, remember.”
They fell into a silence that stretched minutes. Bor stopped a minor apocalypse in its tracks when Larrika, during a bout of frantic re-enactment of gladiatorial action, elbowed the woman in front right in the ear. Bor couldn’t heal her but he could sneakily make the pain go away. Such a light touch wouldn’t put him on the wrong side of the law.
With a quick mental glance at Ciraya – no head-turning required – he applied his power warily, and the poor woman with the throbbing ear swivelled back around, a slightly-dazed smile on her features.
The games continued in all their glory, swords twanging off metal shields, spears twisted in nets. Screams of pain filled the air, the slightly-overblown wails of agony cutting off with suspiciously-perfect timing, just to allow a hero their chance to shout a challenge, allow a villain to snarl their contempt.
At last Ciraya spoke once more.
“How’s it all been going, then?”
He cast her a sideways glance. Her purple-painted lips were pressed into an ominous line. The tattoo-ink encroaching onto her face looked angry, blue-black scars inflicted in esoteric patterns by a mad torturer.
She’s troubled, he realised, holding back his instinct to feel her emotions. This isn’t like her.
“You’re one to ask,” he grunted. “Zandrina’s right up your alley, ain’t she?”
“Zandrina.” The sorceress spat the word like it was made of acid. “Yeah. She’s… up my alley alright.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
He grinned despite himself. “It’ll come to an end, one way or another. Timesnatcher –”
“Don’t talk to me about that lunatic. You’re not still one of his fans are you?”
“Timesnatcher was the greatest –”
“He stood by and watched them burn!”
Bor knew the night she was referring to. He’d been there in the aftermath, witnessed the charred pile of timbers left behind by the confrontation of two rival gangs. Almost two dozen corpses of men and women had been recovered by the magisters, smoking corpses dragged by spells from the impenetrable wreckage, husks of bones and blackened leather clothing.
He was about to retort, tow the line:
What choice did he have? They were killing each other. It’s not as though he killed them. He only let them die, and a good riddance!…
Then he remembered seeing the blackened, animated skeletons of the inkatra-heads, picking their way almost gingerly out of the warehouse’s ruins. He remembered them lining up, remembered turning away so that he didn’t have to look at them, think about them…
“It… it was you?” he asked. “You, who was gettin’ them out of it, wasn’t it? The bodies, I mean.”
She didn’t respond immediately, turning her gaze back to the gladiatorial combat.
“It’s from the day Nightfell showed up,” Bor muttered. “He hasn’t been the same since! She helped us, a few times – I didn’t think – well, I didn’t think nothin’ of it – but when he started killin’ ordinary gangers –”
“Everyone knows he’s lost it. No one sane laughs like that. He’s becoming what he hated. Who he hated. Everyone can see it.”
Bor shuddered, closed his eyes – unconsciously he found himself ducking his head, as if in agreement.
He’d heard the laughter. The gentle delight. He’d felt the shivers up his spine, and now he felt the truth of her words.
“And never mind the Duskdown route – he’s going to go the Everseer route, if he hasn’t already,” Ciraya continued in an icy tone.
“Who hasn’t?” he said with a sigh, then immediately regretted it.
He’d never felt so daunted in the face of a mere mortal, the way she looked at him, eyes narrowing to daggers.
“I – I mean –” He hated it when someone made him mumble, and anger quickly replaced fear. “You know what I mean! It’s – it’s in me. It’s in you! It’s in everyone!”
He’d started to become loud, and the people sitting on the step below him turned around to see who was creating all the commotion – he waved a hand at them and they returned their attention to the gladiators, eyes glazed-over.
“Not Heresy! Not… that. But the sickness! She might not’ve made us heretics but she made us sick. Sick in our hearts. You don’t need magic – just look them in the eye! It’s despair, that’s what it is! And until – until we catch her…” He heard the confidence in his own voice ebbing, vehemence fading as he confronted the prospect of impossibility. “Until it’s over, hope’s never coming back.”
“Timesnatcher won’t catch her,” Ciraya drawled. “If these dragons do rise – we’ve hidden it well, but we’re screwed, you do realise that right?”
“You think I don’t?” He glared at her. “You think you’re the only one who’ll go down fighting?”
“So you will.” The black-robed magister inclined her head gravely, respect in her eyes. “I suppose that’s all I wanted to know.”
“Professionally? Or… personally?” His glare softened. “Feel less alone now?”
She didn’t reply, apparently suddenly enraptured by the relatively-bloodless performance taking place on the sand. He wasn’t buying it. He wouldn’t put pressure on her protections to check – he didn’t need his magic to know he’d hit the mark.
She’s lonely.
He opened his mouth, but was at a loss for what to say. After a few stupid moments he shut his jaw and turned back to see –
A shadow falling across the sand. The morning’s brightness, obliterated in an instant. A sheet of thick, bulbous clouds rippled across the sky, but they weren’t the grey frogspawn clouds of spring for all their shape and texture. These were almost black, their inky fingers stretching out towards the horizon, like dark paint spreading across the face of a pool.
The fighting came to an abrupt halt as everyone in the arena – presumably everyone in Oldtown, in Mund – started staring at the sky, pointing, shouting…
“And if we get hit by an Incursion – we’re screwed then, too,” Ciraya murmured.
She sounded calmer, somehow.
“You mean…”
He craned his head right back and looked up at the heavens, but they could no longer be seen. The blackness of the sky was almost so complete that his instincts started crying out that he should be able to see stars.
“It’s the one we’ve been waiting for,” she breathed, and, as if there were something hallowed in her words, he felt his mind rising with the hairs on his arms. “They say… they say the longer between Incursions, the worse it is when they happen.”
“I’ve heard that,” he replied in a dead voice.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have stopped those Ool cultists.” She sounded calmer. The calmness of the doomed. “Remember that? Could’ve had an Incursion a month earlier. Damn it, Anathta…”
“Bor!” cried Nebbert, yanking on his sleeve. “Bor, look! Hey, Miss Magister! Hey, you!”
Bor kept his eyes on the black skies. “Always knew katra was gonna do somethin’ like this. Stake my career on it.”
“Let’s hope we both continue our careers after today.” It was almost a hiss, and Ciraya slid to her feet, spinning on her heel in a whirl of dark fabric. “Look!”
He copied her, whirling to see.
Before his glyphstone, enchanted to ring only to his ears, could emit a single sound.
Before even the Mourning Bells registered the spectrum of infernal anomalies now dwelling within the city bounds.
It took him a moment or two to gather his thoughts, and in that time he watched fifty civilians die.
They were here – the beasts of the Twelve Hells had already arrived. Over a dozen fiends had scaled the eastern walls of the arena to set upon the hapless crowds in the upper rows behind him.
Huge faces, mottled green, smooth and slick in texture like the detached heads of monstrous, demented toads. Out of their disturbingly-wide maws, whole hosts of diaphanous tongues came shooting, fastening to surfaces and pulling them along, the demons bouncing around behind the ribbons like rope-strung balls in a child’s game. Where some of the glistening strands contacted a person instead of stone – a petrified child’s arm, a screaming man’s hair – their retractions brought the distraught victims, mid-bound, to the gaping mouths instead, where they disappeared with a final, futile thrashing of their protruding legs.
The things had no visible stomachs. Those they devoured were either being destroyed almost instantly – annihilated into pure nothingness – or else being transported, held in some kind of inter-planar gland for later consumption.
Spiritwhisper wasn’t going to find out which – wasn’t going to let any more of his countrymen find out either.
He was no arch-diviner, had no special insight into the correct course of action to take. But he had the instinct of the arch-enchanter to draw upon the best of those near him, and he knew how to motivate others with minimal effort.
“Down to the bottom!” he roared psychically.
Every frozen kid, every panicking parent – as one they finally moved, scrambling down the massive stone steps towards the sands. When he saw knots of people threatening to crush a slower-moving kid, crude bursts of thought were enough to disperse them.
I can do this.
Ciraya was at his side as he started heading down towards the arena-floor with his own flock of amazed, bleating observers in tow. He counted them twice, counting their minds – during Incursions your eyes could deceive you – and they were some of the first to make it to the ground. He hopped down first, then helped Sestreya down to the sand beside him.
The plan, such as it was, had been simple. It was more about the choices that had been closed off – the stairwells within the eastern arc of the building were all located near the top, impossible to reach. The only way out that made sense was to reach the ground-level, then use the tunnels to exit the arena – preferably on the western side. Sheer intuition had propelled him into his decision, and, now that he’d gathered his brothers and sisters and started sprinting with them, he cast a mental backwards-glance and saw that it’d been a good one. The frog-heads were a third the way down the stands, but there were no more targets in their immediate vicinity. People were pouring down by their hundreds, rivers of wailing bodies hitting the sand running.
“Let’s go!” he bellowed.
A multitude followed on his thought.
Ciraya was running next to him, and as she kept pace she hurled something small ahead of them: where it landed a demon suddenly started to grow.
He recognised the fiend, the yithandreng, as her mount – but he knew no one else was going to see it that way. The many-legged, serpentine creature would spread panic, stop the crowds from running at full pace –
No. Her timing had been almost flawless. She sprinted towards the yithandreng in her Magisterium robe, and, even if tensions were running high right now, in times like these it still served as a symbol of protection for the people to rally behind. As the demon neared the minimum size for it to bear a rider, she reached it, and slid atop it, spurring it on into a trot at the very same instant.
The arena floor was under a hundred yards across – they were already half way. The sorceress steered her mount aside as she neared the gaping mouth of the western tunnel –
He reached out a psychic hand for her veiled mind, connecting her thoughts with his, using only a hair of power, the gentlest of possible links.
“Thanks,” he told her bluntly. “I’ll go in with ’em, stop a crush.”
He had to stay with the kids. Get them home, before he could put on his uniform and go to work.
“I’ll be behind you,” she promised, “and I… Oh. Oh man.”
He saw them when she did – the demons of blades and clocks, whizzing and whirring as they descended through the crowds on the west.
Hell’s minions were moving too fast. The citizens of Mund were about to have their escape route cut off – and the chaos of a stampede was about to envelop them all. The mayhem that left the young and the old trampled to death, left the survivors with bloody boots, bloody nightmares. He’d seen it before, and hadn’t been able to prevent it. His psychic hands weren’t large enough to encompass this many. Redirecting one course of thought was as hard as redirecting a trickle of water with your fingers. But influencing this many – it was like correcting the course of an ocean, manipulating a multitude of hidden currents all at once.
He’d failed before but Spiritwhisper could do it now. He was bigger, now. Better. He could stop them.
He extended his arms towards the dark sky and swelled his hands, spreading them over the crowd, settling tendril-fingers across their minds like a net.
“Slow!” he cried. “Stop! Wait!”
The impulses went out across the web, signals that lost their strength the farther they stretched.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to be enough. The blade-demons on the western stands, the frog-demons to the east, they were all closing in – people were about to start dying and there was nowhere for them to go – already some youngsters had fallen, and one of them thought his neck was broken –
The terror was too real. His cries were, for all the force he gave them, too soothing. Not primal enough.
“Cower,” he said.
The telepathic word, spoken silently, cut through the howls of despair on the air.
The brutality of the command pained him. He said it, shuddering, and they responded.
As one, they halted – they hunkered down, awaiting death.
As assessment with which he found himself incapable of disagreeing.
He sent out his illusions, floods of dagger-armed champions entering the fray, opaque and solid-seeming to all eyes but his. Yet the demons were not deceived. He had no time to craft multi-dimensional tools on the required scale, no time to give the conjurations heartbeats, tasty blood in their veins…
Numb fingers that should’ve gone for the glyphstone long ago now found themselves holding the hands of Nebbert and Dorya. He sank down with them, shuddering as the demons started ripping into people.
He withdrew his net from their minds, saving himself the exponential experience of pain which was all his connection to them would do for him now. He sent out his mind to those of the others like him, to the archmages who were his brothers and sisters in battle.
Fumbling with telepathic fingers no less numb than his physical ones – numb and finding nothing.
The Mourning Bells still hadn’t started. What had happened?
He sensed Ciraya, spell-casting.
It’s too late, he thought. Too late.
He looked up, watching a hell-sword slice through a howling woman not twenty feet from him.
But I still believe in the madman. He’ll be here. He’ll come.
He has to.
* * *