INTERLUDE 9F: SIGNIFICANT LOSSES, PART III

“Wherein the shadowland rejects all who die unworthy deaths. Wherein the gods’ avatars walk the earth without need and sit on thrones amidst their congregations. So then – you see why I must reject the concept of an infinite plenitude. It permits infinite Evil. And Kultemeren could not permit that.”

– from Mistress Arithos’s Lectures to the Adept Assembly

She was fast enough to run on air, skipping and cartwheeling between the fiends with a demeanour of casual callousness, carving through them using the lazy precision of a veteran butcher. The seeress’s motions were the barest required to achieve her aims, that same old blistering speed allowing her to carry the same stroke from one foe to the next, to the next, to the next. As her appearance on the scene became all too obvious, noise and light erupting in her wake, the demons became the nonplussed crowd all of a sudden, turning with stunned, blank body-language to track the trajectory of her approach.

Those fiends that turned to meet her onset exploded instantly into shards of glowing hell-steel. Nightfell became a mesmerising spiral as she parried what looked like a dozen attacks simultaneously, hewing clean through her assailants’ deadly arms and continuing the deflections, transforming them into killing-blows – the lithe black shape danced between the infernal entities, a flower loose in the breeze, fatal thorns poised, dismembering their cores and moving through the gushes of sparks that went pouring from their clock-faces, not even looking as she continued on her way.

Four or five seconds had passed since Tanra’s arrival, and the demons nearest to Bor seemed to snap out of the reverie that’d overcome them. They renewed their attacks, slicing at Ciraya’s shielding – a few more seconds would be all it’d take to shatter the defences –

Not one, not two, but ten or more daggers found their marks, hurtling through the air end-over-end at such velocities they looked like discs of light. They ripped into the first rank of kinkalaman, buying those precious seconds.

Then she was there, right in front of Bor, collecting her weapons from the fizzling corpses of the demons and stowing them somewhere with uncanny alacrity.

There was a brief moment in which he seemed to feel her eyes meet his, while he stared upon her, dumb-struck.

Her head tilted to regard Ciraya, and the two women exchanged a brief nod – then the second rank of hell-soldiers right behind Tanra fell in, swords screaming through the air straight at her unprotected back.

The arch-diviner truly set about her work.

She turned and swiped savagely with her upraised weapon, dismembering the ones nearest her, and simply didn’t stop turning, wheeling across out of sight to the right –

Even as Bor tried to follow her with his eyes, she disappeared around the curve of the circle –

Then before he could realise what was happening and look back to his left, Nightfell passed before his eyes again, moving faster this time.

She sped clockwise about the ring of infernal enemies, not just dancing with them but cavorting. It was hard to understand for those who didn’t live with the awful gifts of the arch-diviner, but the subjective speed of her experience was far slower than outward appearance would ever indicate. Practised at interpreting the tactics of her kind, Bor fancied he could almost see the individual actions she took, even as his gaze hopelessly traced the chaos in her wake. She’d skewer one and keep it for her own, swinging it almost twenty yards through the rainy air, spinning with it into others and strewing its limbs amongst the bodies of its allies – she caught the head of another between her heels and pirouetted as she dived into her next attack, unscrewing its face and shutting down all its functions.

There were eight or ten seconds of slowly growing elation, and then –

It was like his own joy was a pressure that couldn’t find release through a single pair of lips.

“Nightfell,” he whispered, strangled, tears of relief in his eyes.

Hundreds of geysers erupted.

“Nightfell!” someone screamed.

“Nightfell!” someone else replied.

“Nightfell!” Nebbert sobbed.

“Night. Fell. Night. Fell. Night. Fell. Night…”

The chant was quickly taken up by the crowd in defiance of the demonic storm looming over them, and in less than half a minute she’d seemingly reduced the invading force by fifty percent. The gap between whatever was left of Ciraya’s floundering shields and the closest demons increased and increased, a field of death where millions of rent, shrivelled pieces of metal glowed like macabre bones atop the still-warm remains of cut-down children.

Tanra was pushing them back – alone.

He’d never seen something quite like this. There were only a few more lines of demons left standing, and those looked close to breaking-point, some kinkalaman at the rear beginning to turn away, lope back up the steps to escape the arena-floor.

Those exploded too, shorn away from existence in showers of red sparks.

Bor experienced a moment of confusion – Tanra was nowhere near the conflagrations occurring on the upper tiers, and while he couldn’t put it past her to have some contingency plan for runners, he couldn’t help but hope, dream –

A wizard too? Mountainslide? Ironvine? Or, could it be… A sorcerer?

Then the darkness seemed to push down from the skies, a column of nothingness descending from the storm clouds. A huge demon arrived in a wind like Tanra’s, standing in her path, taking a place in the circle of kinkalaman.

The newcomer really was like nothing he’d ever seen, but he recognised it all the same – from a tale Winterprince once told. Even Ciraya didn’t know what it was.

Dweonatar, Dustbringer had named it, a few weeks after Winterprince described it.

A marble statue of a robed man, taller than a house, beautiful and serene as far as Bor’s eyes could penetrate the light of its face. He wondered if there really was a hideous expression on the statue’s features, like Dustbringer had said. It was almost hard to believe, despite the circumstances.

About its stony hand a chain was coiled, pressed tight in the perfect, pale fingers, and the smoke softly rising from the burning-hot links was the only form of motion expressed by the demon. It was utterly, abominably still. Even forgetting the part about it being a peerless murder-machine, the mere lack of motion itself was enough to drive an observer insane.

Nightfell stopped short of it and brought both daggers down to point at it, releasing the frog-demon she’d skewered, launching the weird spherical creature at the arch-fiend without hesitating.

Then the frog-demon was falling in two halves as though bisected by some power faster than thought, a huge chunk of its corpse recoiling from Ciraya’s shield – and the dweonatar was inches from Tanra, its chain flying back, coils looking ready to descend and wind about her.

One of those had taken off Winterprince’s leg – through the ice.

If Bor had thought he could imagine her motions before, give meaning to the mess she left behind, now it was all a blur. She was still trying to thin the host of demons, but now she was being pursued by something that didn’t give two drops about her magic. However fast she seemed to go, the marble predator seemed to loom in her path with fist or weapon poised, forcing her to twist and loop her route.

Then without warning both of them were half way up the steps on the southern side of the arena, the dweonatar standing aloof in judgement over the diviner as she rolled with bone-crunching force across the wet stone.

Bor craned his neck to look over the crowd, and borrowed from their impressions to form a view of what was happening.

Tanra was hurt, her arms pulled up to protect her head as she skittered across the hard surface. Before she even stopped rolling, the dweonatar addressed her, its voice colder than the marble from which it was wrought, emptier than its blinding white gaze.

“Ugreel phador so ugrahel, ikasena. Phax zinpharon lagresta ru phadorox o rumez el agar ru Ikasene o ru Sinphalamax. Therem ugreel nist ri dwes a morbukoroz, ghar ziguroym zanthanag.”

He filtered it through Ciraya’s head – she would only think its voice had such properties, to be heard at such a distance – and he had her translate for him.

“Thy life is thine, child. Here I seek only the lives of those who defied the Daughter of the Sinphalamax. Retain thy soul and see it well-blent, ere we meet again.”

He didn’t know much, but he knew enough to recognise the meaning behind the words. The purpose behind this odd-looking assault on the arena.

Ciraya knew too, and rode a wave of panic that threatened to spill her over the edge.

But it was for him. Maybe Ciraya too, but she wasn’t an archmage. Really, it was all for him. All these lives, wasted. Surplus. Interest on the loan.

It seemed Tanra really had changed. It didn’t even recognise her – her, the literal architect of the eolastyr’s downfall.

The seeress came to a stop, rested for half a second, then whipped up to her feet.

The crowd – the demons – the dweonatar – Bor – everything and everyone was put on pause again, hanging on her next words.

Her rejection would be a thing of epic proportions. ‘Sorry, would you like to rephrase that in a language we all’ –

Bor watched through borrowed eyes as the arch-diviner turned tail and fled. She bounded in what looked like two strides to the lip of the outer wall, then dropped down out of sight into Firenight Square.

He waited a moment for her to turn back, for her to come thundering around in a surprise-attack…

The wind whistled. The kinkalaman tick-tocked, out of rhythm, a chaos of clicks and clacks.

“Tanra?” he cried. “Nightfell? K-Killstop?”

But the link had failed, severed at her end. She was too far away already.

Then the crowd moaned with one voice, and he knew. He knew. Their new goddess had abandoned them.

The dweonatar flicked to the edge of Ciraya’s shield, right in front of Bor.

The enchanter sensed it through the sorceress’s mind as the protections died without a whisper.

He leaned back and looked up at the arch-demon’s radiant face, the rain washing the tears from his eyes.

To his family, he thought in as calm a voice as he could manage:

“Leave me.”

He felt as faltering fingers left his grip, the sweaty warmth of the contact suddenly chilled where skin was exposed to the air. They slipped deeper into the crowd, not knowing what they were doing, where they were going – only that they had to move.

I killed you, he thought. I killed all of you.

The dweonatar did something to him and suddenly Bor’s limbs were extended, stretched in their joints to the point where the tendons began to snap. As he rose into the air against his will, the tears spurted from his eyes with renewed fury, spittle flying from his lips.

The elbows and knees were excruciating, but the shoulders? The hips?

He’d never known pain like it. He barked like a dog.

The people nearest him pulled away as best they could, but after the first few shrieks an awed silence seemed to settle over the crowd. They all watched and waited with bated breath as Bor was dragged up by the demon-lord’s black magic, spread-eagled over their heads before the statue’s shining face.

“Thanil,” it said in a derisive tone, and he scrambled for the translation:

“Strong.”

A huge white palm was extended over Bor’s body. Pale light sprayed forth from the smooth flesh, bathing him in its unholy glow, the radiance somehow thick, exuding out across his frail mortal form like lava.

The heat of it.

It didn’t touch his skin, his rain-soaked clothes. It went deeper.

The white light roasted his soul.

His voice alone split the silence, an incoherent yell for death – but this was it. The price for the power he’d enjoyed in life. For him, there’d be no death. No cold wind of Nethernum. No trip to the darkness.

He knew the truth. His soul was going to be stolen, to fuel the Dracofont. But what would come after his body turned to ash – what did it mean for him?

Would he still exist?

The white light became red, and everything turned black.

* * *

It was his nightmare. It was happening again, just like it happened in Upper Tivertain.

Surrounded.

He sometimes wished, in moments like these, that he possessed the foresight afforded to his peers. Timesnatcher and Lightblind had preceded him, and he’d been used to them being better than him, faster than him, knowing more than him about everything. It had just been the way of things. Duskdown had always been an aberration in his mind, more monster than man, whenever Garone’s night-time imagination painted the shape of that saint of Yane. He didn’t count. And of the other diviners Garone had gotten to know – Dimdweller, Doomspeaker, poor Fingersnap – the champion Starsight became was at least their match.

Nowadays, with the appearance of the disturbingly-powerful Killstop and her new, all the more disturbing alter ego… with the advent of Everseer’s return to the ranks of the living, a resurrected creature set atop a heretical pedestal to rival or exceed Duskdown’s… More than ever, lately, Garone was feeling the insufficiency of his own potency. If one of those more-powerful diviners were here right now, surrounded in a rain-drenched grassy clearing by scores of demons of various kinds, they would see the way out. Not just for themselves, but for the seven innocent civilians trapped in here with him too. There would be a route, hidden from him, a pattern by which he could lift the quivering Mundians one by one, move with them in the time-mist at maximum velocity to a place of safety – travel in and out, before the fiends even knew what was happening.

These weren’t even particularly impressive fiends. Many were third rank or lower, going off memory. But there were so many, clambering over the walls and pouring out from between the trees, cutting off his lines of egress bit by awful bit.

So many that it was beyond him. He could see no further than his next ten or twelve actions. As he ripped through the scintillating black face of a glass jackal, his inward eye saw only the shelves of fate, closing in about his mind. As he pushed the two kids out of the way and hewed at the neck of a many-legged, jawless horse, in his mind the rows of forbidden books pressed nearer, rattling in their ranks, shedding red ink like blood to run in streams from the wooden surfaces of the shelves.

He watched seven become six, the young woman pulled right out of his arms and into the mouth of something that took off her head with a single bite – the way into the future narrowed until he was sidling through a gap no greater than twelve inches wide – fighting for breath with his head turned, knowing only that he had to keep moving forwards, keep chasing the moment in which awareness would crystallise, the way forwards transforming into the way out, the aisle suddenly expanding until he wouldn’t be able to touch both sets of shelves with his arms thrown wide –

It never came. The way narrowed. Even with his head turned and chin lifted, his feet twisted about at the ankle – he couldn’t go any further. The blood-ink in which the holy, unholy knowledge had been written – it dripped down from the infinite heights of the timeless library, showering down upon his head and shoulders, drenching him, drowning him…

Six became four became two became one.

One little girl left, untouched by the demons’ claws. Twelve years old. Twelve years, fifty-seven days.

Let’s make it twelve years and fifty-eight.

Each loss had brought painful, dearly-bought clarity. The branching of the future-paths had grown exponentially with each person he came across, each he had to save – and they shrank with the same speed, whole futures destroyed, eradicated as though they could have never come to pass in the first place.

One future left.

While his muscles contorted, performing the deadly dance that trailed gold and silver rainbows through the motionless droplets hanging in the air, riding the time-wave through the bodies of demon after demon – he saw that future laid bare.

Four children. Benessela Yellowcup would have four children, nine grandchildren, and would even get to meet a couple of her great-grandchildren before Mortiforn closed his warm arms about her soul. It all started here. She would be leaving Mund, after this. Her mother had died already – one of the Incursion’s victims Garone had already failed – but her father was still breathing, over in Oldtown, and if he lived out the day, they would be leaving the city together, bound for Amrana. All Garone had to do was nudge her out of the way of the imps descending at her, cut through the spindly black fingers that came lunging out of the air to snag in her curly hair. She didn’t know what was happening – she probably couldn’t even tell he was trying to protect her when he shoved her, spinning her out of the reach of their snapping talons. It didn’t matter. She was light and little for her age, barely taller than a gnome. Garone was lithe, but there was plenty of muscle on his rakish frame. He got his arm around her waist before she could spin to the ground, and, while Benessela was still trying to process what was happening to her, the champion was already lifting her. Within a blink he had her hoisted over his shoulder.

The way between the shelves opened up, and he could see it. The grand foyer. The place with doors that led everywhere, down a thousand library aisles.

Success. Survival.

He only had the gold-steaming dagger in his right hand with which to kill his enemies, his left clasped at the small of Benessela’s back, but there were only a pair of fiends now between himself and freedom. He moved through them like a hurricane through wheat, sprinting for the knee-high bit of wall which would represent the finish-line. The point beyond which his future was written, potential rushing into reality and inhabiting existence. All with the inevitability of a bubble popping, struck with a pin.

The pin struck the bubble, and the bubble slid aside. A one in a billion chance.

The ball of his right foot landed atop the low wall. The forest path, clear of foes, was right ahead of him. Teasing him with its nearness.

It was a sound, coming from behind him, that made him freeze like the raindrops, made his ankle twist, made him spill the kid on the ground. No vision had permitted him a glimpse of the sound’s maker. No warding-spell could defend him against its cacophonous manipulations.

Crack!

He jolted to a stop, unable even to turn, almost floating as all his potential energies were robbed away.

“Eolastyr!” he cried over the link.

“You,” came the purr of the tiger-woman from behind him. “You were there, that fateful day, whereupon my Sister fell. Six of your rib-bones bear her mark. They are part of her story.”

While he struggled against her time-wave, her forces caught up with him and overtook him, leering. The paralysed Benessela was hefted up by the jackals, claws of black glass piercing her shoulders and arms – she couldn’t even scream as three of them lined up their glittering swords to hack her to pieces –

He didn’t understand the prayer, but he prayed it.

I have no time. I know no space. I come to you, Illodin. Give me a memory. Chraunator, give me something. Let me be known, before I fade.

Starsight ripped through the infernal construct pinning him in stasis, moving a full second early. He left Garone behind, all his hopes and dreams, his visions of his future. He knew. He understood what this purpose cost him.

Her life or mine.

The champion wasn’t even sure what he did when he moved at the glass jackals – he felt as though he simply flung himself at them, but they were reduced to black sand, sent streaming on a current of wind he’d produced.

“And stronger now,” the voice behind him crooned, musing. “I shall spare the rod with you, my child. You cannot spoil.”

He was on a forest path, a hundred yards from the outer edge of the Sunset Keep, Benessela in the crook of his arm once more –

Three hundred yards away –

He hadn’t even realised he was fleeing; he looked over his shoulder, just to be on the safe side.

“You are ripe, Garone.”

He certainly hadn’t realised the demon was running with him, just behind him, the terrifying triangular face smiling benignly as she spoke, no breathlessness evident in her delicate smooth voice, no effort in the ranging of her power-suffused limbs.

How can she –

She overtook him, casually shoulder-barging him out of his timestream, sending him cartwheeling out of control down an embankment choked in brambles.

Get up!

He snapped to his feet – the hundreds of little thorns that’d pricked his skin were nothing compared with the aching in his right arm where the eolastyr had connected with him, splintering bones and tearing tendons.

Despite the gloom here beneath the thick canopy, beneath the overcast skies, his eyes retained the power to find Benessela.

She was thirty yards off, her body lying broken in the lowest branches of an oak. Her frail chest was still rising and falling, but twisted twigs were protruding from her stomach, and…

His eyes found the girl, just as the coils of a whip extended from outside his field of vision to ensnare her, removing all her outer layers.

He looked down in anguish. He knew the little kid was still alive, and would be left there to shiver in agony until the grace of death was permitted her.

He almost would’ve taken her life himself, if there wasn’t a sliver of a chance of rescue. But there were greater powers than his own marshalled this day in defence of the city. If one of the insane seers came… a healer could be found…

No, Starsight, he said to himself. You were simply wrong. It is not her life or yours. It is both.

You miscalculated.

He raised his gaze to the eolastyr, taking in the purple and black fur, the wicked, crowned head. The flesh-coated whip. The serene expression.

She was just like her sister.

You were dividing by the wrong factors all along.

She came striding down the embankment towards him but each pace was a careful slow step, lethargy in her every motion, as if just daring him to run again.

His right arm was useless, but he still had one good striking-hand. He could kick…

Thousands. Thousands. Thousands will die. Thousands and thousands… Run. Survive. Save more.

And, the only answer his soul could provide in its final moments:

Glaif.

He closed his eyes, letting her approach.

Glaif, I surrender. I will do as my oath demands. If they must remember me, Illodin, let it be not as one whose life was thrown away in vain. Kultemeren, let the truth be known.

I do it because it is right. That can never be a waste, when it is remembered.

Starsight opened his eyes and, arm hanging limply at his side, the champion sped to meet the eolastyr’s advance.

* * *

Disconsolate muttering grew, and grew, until the whispers were almost words, the grunts of annoyance becoming moans of real pain. The downward slope gradually morphed into a flat plateau, so gradually that Twivona couldn’t remember exactly when the twin agonies in her ankles had faded from roaring hearths to dully-glowing emberstones. She knew only that walking was much more manageable now; with the easing of the discomfort, she let her thoughts idle by, not really conscious of anything anymore. What would be, would be. At least they, the protectors of the Realm, would be kept safe. Mund would weather the storm.

Just how much farther can they really expect us to go?

To whomever ‘they’ pertains…

Where did this ceremony come from, this rite of sending the masters of the Realm down into blackness with these stupid glowing sticks? How ancient was it, really? Something from the Reformation in 777? Something from the era of the Mage Wars? Something stretching back even to the dynasties of the Founders, the Age of the Five Houses?

Something… older still?

She suspected there were very few who could say, and fewer still who would. When she’d been a young girl, she’d expected the history of the Realm to be some concrete, cast-iron entity, a fixed and immutable chronology anyone could follow, supposing they could read. Indeed the first texts with which she’d been provided had supported, even explicitly encouraged the notion. Gnomes and dwarves and especially elves – the planetouched sub-races of humanity were possessed of such lifespans, how could any knowledge ever be lost? Sorcerers could summon-up the dead to unveil the secrets of the past, or even seek the dread lore held only by demons – how could any pertinent details in the tale of centuries be missed? And diviners, and soothsayers – how could any mysteries exist, all explanations of their twists and turns forgotten?

Yet exist they did. Guided by her tutors in her mid-teens, Twivona finally had access to the kinds of materials required to give context to her confusion. Mund had undergone several semi-apocalyptic events, and, even with a wealth of magical record-keeping options, there was always something physical to be destroyed. A crystal ball would be smashed. A book would be consumed by flame. A stronghold off-world would be raided, abandoned, or simply lost in space and time.

That was to say nothing of the ambiguity of eldritches, from which was derived, so it was said, the very meaning of the word. The pronouncements of prophets and seers were either so inscrutable as to elide objective interpretation altogether, or they gave excuses, saying only that they were blinded by forces beyond the interlocutor’s ken. Were one to enquire of a venerable elf-lord as to occurrences say, two hundred years ago, one would receive a far less-meaningful answer than one might find in the hand-selected eye-witness testimonies collected in the Maginox library, the Temple of Illodin… and those testimonies weren’t just full of contradictions – they were made out of contradiction. Polite society had formulated a hundred theories about every single uncertain event, and there were a thousand such notable moments.

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Perhaps things had always been so, but it seemed to Twivona that many had little better to do these days than while away the hours in circular argument and wine, ‘wining and whining’ as she so-often thought of it, and even the blandest hypothetical at a dinner-party might elicit academic outrage when it struck the fermenting cauldron that was the collective mind of Mund. Simple statements were forever causing uproar amongst the distinguished fellows of the colleges, some poor researchers even incurring the accusation of irreligiosity from those scholars to whom they presented the greatest challenge. Reportedly, blood had recently been shed at an otherwise-gentlemanly rum supper, thanks to a dispute over the accepted causes of the fifth-century shake-up in sanitation spells.

Extreme polarisation was the chef’s recommendation, and no one wanted to be left out, tasting at least a mouthful from their partners’ plates and complaining loudly about it. Tensions were running high lately, of course, and those lords, ladies and educated folk who were not privileged enough to sit on the Councils, whose outlets remained fixed purely in the theoretical, incapable of effecting real change – those people would vent their frustrations, one way or another. She could only pray the afflictions of the lower classes wouldn’t invade the safe spaces enjoyed by the nobles – once the highborn started using spells to settle their arguments, stepping beyond the constraints of the formal duelling system, the magisters would be forced to move in… There were several high-ranking Magisterium officials who would’ve just loved to arrest half the landed gentry of the city. North Lowtown and Sticktown had demonstrated – were continuing to demonstrate – just how well that would go. Even the poor resisted when they were scrutinised, treated harshly by the watch and magistry – and they were already exposed to such treatment, long-inured against constraints on activity, freedom. How much worse it would be, should her peers start to break the rules… she could scarcely bring herself to imagine.

The word Blackway on Nightfell’s tongue was like the returning of a lost key, and she was turned about in the labyrinth of her mind, trying to unlock a door she’d misplaced. She knew she’d studied it but when she… She’d been trying to think…

History…

Ambiguity…

If she didn’t know better, she’d suspect herself of a fascination.

Certainly, she couldn’t recall anything about a metal tunnel. She’d always thought of the Blackway as leading to some sort of prestigious war-room, a big bunker, something like the conference room on the fourth floor of the Maginox. Perhaps equipped with scrying devices, glyphstones…

But the people who’d walked this long, long passage before her – why had they left no report of their experiences?

Maybe they had. Maybe she was just being silly. There were probably reams of texts referring to this location, and she was simply mistaking her strained memory for something more sinister. It was conceivable that she literally hadn’t read it. The clause about fleeing the Arrealbord for the Blackway was one of the ten lines of the Ruling Vow taken by the esteemed Lords and Ladies when they came into their inheritances. ‘Blackway-bound in direst need.’ That was all. Most of them probably hadn’t spared the notion a single thought since their induction, even in these horrifying times. She certainly hadn’t.

We’ve lived in the nightmare too long to recognise our environs for what they are.

A pinprick of light appeared ahead.

The whispers behind her intensified. She heard the voices she knew and hated, feeling the pressure of their expectations, the weight of destiny pushing her forwards. Her legs shook as she led them towards the light.

Lady Gwena Rhaegel broke the silence of Twivona’s little quartet.

“We’ve travelled east-south-east approximately two and a half miles in almost an hour, my Lady.” Her voice held an excitement Twivona had trouble sensing in herself. “Given an average seven degree slope, that would put us about five hundred yards beneath the streets of Blackbranch.”

“The sense of the name is made plain, then,” Wenlyworth croaked.

“What’s this?” Lord Haid huffed, turning to fix his old colleague with an alarmed gaze. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Blackway!” Lord Wenlyworth said with vehemence, clearly upset at having to waste more of his breath on words. “Blackbranch! The ancient names… unchanged. Or else, changed in unison…”

Finally Wenlyworth snorted, and flapped a shrivelled hand in irritation, as if to say it wasn’t worth the bother.

“Oh, I see,” Haid replied lamely. “Very good… yes…”

Surrounded by the Realm’s finest conversationalists, Twivona stepped towards the light of salvation, feeling suddenly as though she would’ve preferred to remain in the darkness, unclarified, a future still in potential.

The light resolved itself into a perfect oval aperture into golden brilliance. The oval was so narrow, it barely touched the floor. There was a little lip there – she’d have to go through first, alone, and remember to lift her foot to a sufficient height…

She glanced through before lowering her eyes, noting only the featureless sandstone walls finally resolving themselves. Her awareness switched for less than a second to trace the motion of the right foot, ensuring she didn’t spill herself onto the glowing floor of this incomprehensible new chamber.

She moved away from the entrance, and one by one her peers entered after her, their hissing and moaning transformed to gasping, exclamations of awe. The High Lords and Ladies, their Shadows and Justices and Malices – they all fanned out, staring off into the distance between the thick pillars towards the far wall, or staring up at the shadow-choked ceiling.

“If only I had some shaderoot,” Lady Rhaegel murmured ruefully. She caught Haid’s look and clarified: “To see in the dark, Gathel. Five, you did graduate, didn’t you?”

The floor was similar to the Noxway, it seemed, but beneath the unbroken glass-like surface was a kind of honey-like fluid, rather than milk-like. Whatever the substance was in truth, it produced a source of illumination that was warm, golden, reassuring… but it didn’t stretch more than twenty feet up the walls, the pillars.

Casting about, Twivona saw that some of the other rod-holders had dropped their glowing sticks near the entrance. Feeling foolish, she returned to place hers near to theirs. Walking back towards the oval, the exit to the metal tunnel, she was staggered by how small it looked from this side, a tiny blemish in an otherwise perfectly-smooth sandstone wall.

She crouched to carefully place down her rod, and it was only then that she recognised the feeling for what it was:

Trapped.

She rose back to her full height and smoothed-down the folds in her gown.

There’s no barrier, nothing stopping us leaving this place… We’re fine.

“What are we to do now, Sentelemeth?” Cay-Lehan Osordei snapped, appearing out of the crowd. “You’ve led us on a fool’s errand –”

“Only a fool would believe that,” Lady Rhaegel said, coming up behind Twivona. “Just look at this place!”

“We’re lucky it’s summer or we’d freeze in here before we’d starve.” Cay-Lehan waved her hand, indicating the emptiness. “There’s not even anywhere to sit!”

“This chamber is artificially warmed…” old Lord Humming observed softly to Twivona’s left.

“Better to simmer here, than burn up there.” Lord Pintalion, watching from the gathered assemblage, indicated the unseen ceilings with his gaze, and there was a general murmur of approval.

Osordei’s eyes flashed dangerously. “We have weathered many Incursions – not a single member of the Arrealbord has been lost to a demon in fifty years!”

Haid started, “Actually –”

“A demon in an Incursion, I mean, of course,” Osordei snapped, sneering. “Come, we should return; by the time we arrive back in the palace grounds the damned invasion will already be over.”

She moved to step past Twivona, towards the oval opening and the pile of faintly-glowing rods. A few others started shifting their weights, bending like reeds in the wind to follow her.

Twivona stepped aside to let her pass.

“Are you afraid, too?”

Osordei almost stumbled as she came to a halt. It was as though Twivona’s words struck her a physical blow. The fierce expression on her face melted like candle-wax.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” the First Lady said gently. “We –”

“Mortails.”

The word descended down from the shadows and shook the room. Cries of panic were ripped from every throat, and by instinct Cay-Lehan drew closer to Twivona, putting out her fingers to claw at the silken sleeves covering the First Lady’s arm.

Twivona smiled, and settled her fingers over Lady Osordei’s, turning her face up to the darkness and crying back:

“I am First Lady of Mund, Twivona Sentelemeth, Bearer of the Sceptre of the Five’s Realm! Treat with me, and leave the others be!”

Silence fell. No one even dared breathe, paralysed by sheer terror.

“Thau arit Twivona Sentelemeth.” There was a moment of hesitation, just long-enough for her to absorb the ancient form of address, then the voice thundered on: “Ledder thau phipal dew. Thay fate thau arit shoumeran unnertau, unon am dunoll.”

Old Mundic.

Not Modern Mundic, New Mundic, Middle Mundic, or even High Mundic. Old Mundic.

Her postgraduate thesis had explored the links between Old Mundic and the language of magic given to the world by the Five Founders. Of everyone in the Arrealbord, she was amongst the best-placed to understand the message hidden in the words.

But fate. Fate never changed.

‘You are summoned unto your fate one and all.’

It’s like I was born to be here.

“What would you have me do?” she cried. “Wudt thu thau imga ovo ucos?”

Two of the pillars moved, rumbling as they snapped halfway up, forming knees.

They weren’t pillars. They were crude legs.

A misshapen head, a sandstone boulder wider than a man was tall, came swinging down into view atop a hundred-ton torso.

The unfinished sculpture of a toddler – that was her mind’s instinctive interpretation. It was missing feet, fingers, a nose… Rough approximations of eyes and ears were in place, and the mouth held no darkness within when it spoke, words emanating from what appeared to be a shallow hollow just behind its toothless gums.

Elemental? Eldritch? It scarcely mattered. It was beyond the scope of her lore.

“Commain,” it boomed. “Thau arit to be pherosaid witut frein. Thay –”

“No!” Osordei screamed.

She wasn’t alone in screaming – but she was the first to move towards the way out, darting at the oval opening with surprising haste.

Osordei never took classes in Old Mundic – Twivona knew that much. Perhaps the Third Lady of Mund had subjected herself to a language-comprehension spell – perhaps she did understand the awful meaning of its words.

‘Come. You are to be processed without delay.’

Whatever the reason for her flight, it ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Doooooooom.

The pillar moved, blocking the opening in a single titanic step. Osordei disappeared from sight.

Doooooooom.

The pillar it was paired with landed near to it, sending several of the most eminent in the Realm sprawling, gasping in fear.

For an instant Twivona thought Osordei must have made it – the first pillar was now covering the wall, the immense creature’s leg blockading the exit such that one could be forgiven for forgetting the avenue of escape was even there. Osordei could’ve leapt through just before… just before the leg landed…

Then Twivona saw the pool of blood seeping out from the seam where the creature’s foot met the floor.

Its weight was such that Cay-Lehan had been reduced not to paste but to fluid.

Those who’d been moving in Osordei’s wake fell back, shrinking into themselves, spinning on their heels while their hands and eyes reached out for aid –

Doooooooom. Doooooooom. Doooooooom. Doooooooom.

The chamber was filled with columns shifting, monsters coming closer. There had to be dozens of the creatures in here.

“Thau moast swurtum olfa ootum. Thay skelut isi utplenece.”

‘You must swear the oath. Your terror is misplaced.’

Twivona stood and stared, incapable of even starting to express the panic she was feeling. She was supposed to set an example to the others, but she was suddenly aware of her mortality, impotent to rip her gaze from the puddle of redness still spreading about the creature’s cuboid foot where Osordei had vanished.

Mortals. Mortails. Whatever it was – golem, demon – it had reminded the Lords and Ladies of their inherent vulnerability with its very first word.

The pillars halted. The rulers of the Realm were surrounded and they couldn’t even really see the harbingers of their deaths. She hadn’t listened to the warning and now they were being rounded up like cattle for the slaughter. Terrible, awful things were going to happen to them, and it would all be her fault – she was the one, the one who led them to –

“Thanks for opening the way, Twivvie. I’ve always been curious what was down here.”

Twivona turned, slack-jawed, to stare upon Nightfell.

The black-garbed champion was standing on the edge of their impromptu little gathering, leaning against one of the pillars nonchalantly. One of the pillars that had only just settled into place.

How did she even get in here? The way is blocked…

And, on the heels of that:

But… doesn’t she realise… that’s a leg?

Evidently she did, given the way she reacted when the pillar tried to stamp down on her. She carried no obvious weaponry – the bow was no longer slung over her shoulder – and yet when the column beside her retracted up into the air, a vast sandstone knee-joint bending into shape over her head, the champion produced two glittering daggers dripping in energies.

She didn’t blur aside, preferring merely to blur on the spot, arms upraised –

The sandstone column plunged down at her – at the living drill rotating a thousand times a minute.

The gargantuan golem came into sharp relief as the loss of its leg sent it crashing to the floor. Whatever the shining ground had been constructed from, it was clearly sterner stuff than that comprising the stony inhabitants of the chamber. There was no splintering of glass as it hit the deck. Just the dreadful rending of stone, the pitter-patter and ping of rocky shards off the radiant surface.

We’re saved, Twivona breathed silently.

“Well, now, that was rude,” the seeress muttered, brushing the yellowish dust out of the modest cleavage of her corset-like vest. “Really, you’d think after waiting aeons they’d have the patience to stop and chat.” The arch-diviner whipped about, pointing the orange-glowing dagger in her left hand at the emotionless face of the golem she’d toppled. “Thau! Wudt thu thau moss i ‘pherosaid’? Wudt ‘ootum’?”

Other than the grinding of sandstone, she received no answer. The fallen golem tried and failed to stand. Either due to a flaw in the method of its construction or due to the materials from which it had been made, it couldn’t put both its fingerless fist-like hands on the floor at the same time as its remaining foot. Yet it seemed to want to do nothing else. Those nearest it backed away in renewed fear as it went splaying flat on the ground like a lowborn drunkard, over and over again.

Its fellows didn’t seem to want to help it. No more columns shifted. Twivona imagined their expressionless faces up there in the dark, surveying their broken friend’s futile attempts to rise with dispassionate eyes.

Nightfell didn’t move aside, staying precisely where she was. Whenever its flailing limbs came sweeping towards her, she seemed to flicker, and as the sandstone limb would pass by she would reappear in her place.

“Well, this is boring,” the diviner opined – then blurred into action once more.

The fallen golem became a pile of rubble and a cloud of dust, Nightfell’s once-more empty hands brushing down her clothing.

The motions of her hands drew Twivona’s attention to the rapid rise and fall of the seeress’s chest.

She defeated one, but can she defeat them all?

“Thau arit nuta mosst to be arie.”

Twivona’s mind translated with glee:

‘You are not meant to be here.’

The cogitation-spells set upon these golem-things had clearly gathered dust over the years, but the destruction of their colleague finally seemed to spur them into action.

Doooooooom. Doooooooom. Doooooooom. Doooooooom.

“Wudt ootum!” Nightfell cried, even as she slipped the first tremendous fist that was aimed at her. “I know I’m doing the whole uninvited guest routine but…”

The first golem was a rain of stones.

“… Twelve Hells, all I want are some answers and I’ll get…”

The second toppled, heated to the point parts of its legs went flowing across the ground like slag.

“… right out of your hair, I promise…”

A group seemed to converge on her, pillars ringing her – then she was leaping back into the circle from the outside, and split three of them in two with a single motion, sending torsos and heads rolling.

“… not that you guys exactly go for the flowing-locks look. Have you considered a toupé? I know a place…”

An imperceptible flurry of blows reduced a struggling golem into pile of sandstone chunks each no bigger than a dinner-plate.

“… place you can get… great discount…”

The diviner was tiring but it didn’t matter. She’d done her job, done everything she needed to do. She’d distracted the gigantic keepers of this ancient hall from their task.

It was Twivona and the others who were shirking their responsibilities. The First Lady knew, somewhere at the back of her mind, that she should be running. This was her opportunity – the exit was –

She jerked her head about and saw that the way out was clear. The champion had risked her life to force the golem blocking the Blackway to move. And Twivona was wasting it, wasting every precious second.

Wenlyworth was already staggering towards the oval, and others were with him, ahead of him and behind, some holding the glow-rods…

Twivona moved like a jaguar, yelling at the others to cross the threshold, enter the metallic tunnel back to safety.

Relative safety.

How long she stood there beside the opening she couldn’t tell, even when she was right there in the moment, slapping the backs of her peers and forcing them bodily into the exit. She kept her focus, ignoring the crimson sludge beneath her shoes. Instead of being where she was, who she was, she imagined she was one of the magisters attending some crisis, desperately attempting to evacuate a building before some demon or darkmage turned its attention upon the civilians. Did the magisters undergo such frustration when they were doing their work? The nobles were pushing and shoving at each other, affiliations and simple manners abandoned as they clawed their way past each other, pressing single-file into the gap. The crowd seemed to be taking forever to filter through.

Beyond them, Twivona caught glimpses of Nightfell’s brave performance. The seeress was definitely out of her depth. The columns had converged upon the whirling blur of death, the golems’ fists looming down out of the shadows again and again to strike at her. Her motions were slower than before, and she was fighting atop an ever-growing mound of debris, her footing becoming less sure by the second. It was only a matter of time before the poor girl got clobbered, and one blow was all it would take to reduce her wiry little body to pulp.

Maybe she’d live. Maybe. But even if she perished, her sacrifice would not have been in vain. Save for Osordei, they’d all been emancipated from the trap. Every single Lord and Lady of the Realm.

Just a handful of nobles remained. Lady Rhaegel, whose diligence would return to pay dividends, had waited with her.

Twivona waved her through then, last as she was first, followed.

Decorum had been left behind in the chamber. Many of the nobles at the front were sprinting, given the way the lights they carried swayed and dimmed in the distance – some had even kicked off their footwear, and at one point Twivona was sent stumbling over a pair of Im Hatal high-heels that were worth a small fortune.

She kept her own shoes on. The High Herrions on her feet were ensorcelled beyond the norm for good balance, and she would’ve been damned before she abandoned them in this ghastly place.

The elderly and infirm were shuffling along as fast as their daily dose permitted, the concoction of herbs that had been designed to reinvigorate old bones now pushed to its limits. Before long Twivona and Gwena were traipsing at the rear of the slowest-moving group.

The First Lady caught Gwena’s gaze in the dim light, recognising the same fear in her colleague.

We’re at the back. We’ll be the first to die if we’re followed.

“She saved us,” Twivona found herself saying curtly, as if to chastise herself aloud for the unspoken contents of her mind. “They can’t follow – they can’t fit in here…”

“Damn right they couldn’t,” came the uncouth reply from behind her.

Twivona halted, spinning on her heel in amazement.

Nightfell was there, following along behind the Arrealbord members with no indication she was anything but a lowborn teenaged girl, her masked face lowered to the floor. Twivona could just about make out the gentle rise and fall of her chest – if she didn’t know better, she would’ve said the champion was already recovering from her exertions.

“N-Nightfell!” Twivona cried, the word torn from her in surprise; then immediately she cursed herself for the idiotic-sounding outburst.

“They’re all dead,” the seeress said, coming to a halt and keeping her eyes on her feet. “Dead.”

The First Lady was vaguely aware of the ripple of sound behind her as news of the champion’s victory swiftly spread. Some of those who’d moved farther up the tunnel were now returning, by the sounds of things, doubtless hoping the champion would have some explanation of the events which had occurred… Or at least hoping the champion would have some trick up her sleeve to expedite the laborious trek back up to the palace gardens…

Twivona took a few moments to catch her own breath, let her quivering limbs settle. The debating voices swelled in her ears, each slicing whisper, each incisive hiss more irritating to her right now than the last.

“Nightfell!”

“Nightfell?”

“The girl! She did it!”

“I heard Nightfell was the fugitive, Killstop.”

“Killstop was a champion too!”

“And a heretic.”

“Heretic – what does that even mean, anymore?”

“What did it ever?”

“Do not start down that line of thinking again…”

“I know she turned the tide in Zadhal. I know we would be the dragon’s whipping boys if not for her. That’s what I know.”

Twivona sighed, and tried to swallow down the sickness she suddenly felt washing over her in waves.

She spoke directly to the black-clad figure: “I-ignore them all. You have the Realm… Realm’s thanks for your actions today. And a… a pardon, if one is required.”

The dark mask tilted slightly, as though there were invisible eye-slits through which the girl might regard the First Lady.

“Thank you, Lady Sentelemeth.”

The champion’s words were ever so slightly muffled by the covering over her face, of course, but that didn’t impede the raw emotion in her voice. A tear started in the corner of each of Twivona’s eyes suddenly.

It’s the stress, the First Lady thought, immediately blinking and pressing the heel of each hand into her face, ensuring all moisture was swept away. It wouldn’t do for one of her more-aggressive peers to notice the wetness sparkling in her eyes, especially not at a time like this.

“You know I explored every inch of that place down there?” The change in Nightfell’s tone of voice was startling, the chin coming up sharply, the hooded head surveying the lords and ladies at the front. The girl suddenly had the air of a school-mistress addressing her naive young pupils, indulging them in a rare moment of candid revelation. “Seamless. It mirrored, in four dimensions. Like a – a fabric, a fabric, a non-orientable space-time… Did you see how slowly I was moving? Did you notice? No… I have no idea what they wanted you for… who built it, and how –”

“And that’s unusual for you,” Twivona said, trying to sound soothing, sympathetic. “I understand. But w-we can chat about it another time. It’s okay. We’re okay. Go. I’m sure they need you out there.”

Twivona found she didn’t give a damn what the things below were going to do with the nobles, didn’t give two hoots how the weird room came to be what it was, where it was. She just wanted the archmage to leave.

She smiled reassuringly, stepping back as if to let a way out part behind her in the crowded passage, hoping the others would follow suit.

“But don’t say it like that,” the former Killstop murmured.

I beg your pardon?

“That just tells me you know where this is leading. Why in Vaahn’s name would you tell me you know?” The heretic’s voice rose. “You were supposed to say, ‘And that’s unusual for you, w-why don’t we have a nice ch-chat about it on the way back to the palace.’ I mean, if you wanted to die, why not just tell me straight!”

Twivona swooned and instinctively backed up another step, more than just nauseated, as two amethyst rods appeared in Nightfell’s hands.

No, not rods. It was a pair of identical dirks, each of the long blades scintillating with swirls of pink light, tiny gleaming droplets rising from their edges and dripping upwards towards the ceiling.

Tears of Nethernum.

All other light seemed to fade in the presence of the ensorcelled weapons, the rods in their hands dimming.

“All this… all this protection.” The seeress was sneering. “All these special protocols, special places… Curse the Five! By what right do you govern? You aren’t elected. You don’t even have to earn your place. You’re born, and you just inherit this… all this glory…”

“No different from you,” a man snapped in retort from behind Twivona. “You archmages – at least we train for politics all our lives. You’re just…”

The First Lady turned.

Vernays, you old fool!

He fell silent, just as though he’d heard her thought.

“Lord Justice Yular Vernays,” Nightfell whispered. “Of all the Lords of the Realm, it’s you I’ve most been dying to meet. Don’t you know? I knew your brother.”

His… brother? Twivona couldn’t quite recall the man’s family situation. Who was his brother?

“Your brother, who gave his life for the justice you never once sought.” Nightfell stepped towards the still-handsome, elfin noble and now the aghast crowd parted, letting the blade-wielding diviner approach closer to her prey, cringing away from her and whimpering. “Your brother, whose pain at your rejection cost this city more than you could ever hope to bring it with a thousand years of governance.”

Lord Vernays was as white as a sheet. His mouth opened and closed on empty air.

“Don’t you realise?” Nightfell barked at him, making him flinch back. “We are the pure ones. We are the ones with the power. We have the blood of the Five in our veins! You – all of you – you are just part of the problem. A system that consumes, and consumes, and knows not that the pips caught in its teeth are the bones of the dead, worked to the marrows to feed the tertiary delights of an indifferent royalty. Oh, if I could bring an arch-enchanter to show you! The sixteen hours of unflinching toil that goes into just one ingredient of your so-called daily doses. How much does the peasant in the silverwheat field earn for his labour? Could any of you even conceive what it is, to exist on the relative value of eight coppers a week? Do you even know what eight coppers look like? The peasant might not either, but for very different reasons!”

Twivona looked to Gwena. Her colleague merely shook her head, her wide-thrown eyes a perfect mirror for the terror Twivona felt, reflecting only the miasmatic purple vapours as they dripped towards the tunnel ceiling against all logic, falling up over their heads and dissipating into nothingness.

“It’s a good job,” the arch-diviner said, suddenly sounding strangled. “A good job, I’m Everseer. Otherwise I’d let you live to tell what you’ve seen.”

Nightfell took a long look at their flinching reactions, lingering purely so that the Lords and Ladies were forced to languish in renewed dismay – then the archmage laughed, and vanished, like she’d been a ghost all along.

They took almost ten minutes to recover from the shock of the encounter, sitting on the curved floor with their backs against the metallic walls, all decorum thrown to the non-existent winds. The rods gleamed brightly once more with the overpowering ensorcellments of the weapons removed from the environment, and their spirits were soon lifted. They had survived! With ever-decreasing fear in their voices, they discussed the behaviour of the troubled teen. Apparently for all her heroism, Killstop remained detached from reality. Who indeed would spurn a formal pardon for their heretical activities? Forego the opportunity to be the first to be so pardoned? To no longer have to look over one’s shoulder at every juncture?

Only one who dwelt in the Thirteen Candles, Lord Pintalion opined. Lord Vernays nodded furiously, his delicate jaw locked, lips sealed tight.

The argument the seeress was indeed Everseer seemed an easy temptation, to Twivona. But she suspected in truth it was just one more indication of her madness. It seemed, to her, Killstop was acknowledging her insanity by analogy to that former almighty champion in whose footsteps the youngster had seemingly followed.

She kept her responses to herself as she got to her feet, watching with satisfaction as most of the others started to follow suit. She set off, and they shambled after her.

Only to one so supremely confident in her own abilities, one so supremely detached from society, from reality… Only to her is my pardon rendered meaningless.

She imagined the poor girl sleeping alone beneath a bridge, down in some slum the likes of which Twivona knew she could scarcely imagine. So swept up in the tide of her power that there was no real world anymore, nothing else to do or care about than the vagaries of her visions. It was hardly as though she were in any danger, or would want for anything – surely a seeress on Killstop’s level could obtain any luxury she desired in the matter of half a moment. That in itself would serve to detach a person from the usual considerations of decency.

No moment of pleasure. Nothing to relish, the consequences unknown. All there would be was the imperishable knowledge, that they were forever bound, slaves to necessity…

As much as she’d threatened them all, Twivona couldn’t help but feeling that the former champion still deserved forgiveness for whatever crimes she’d committed. Killstop didn’t need hunting; she needed help – a place, maybe even a station with a salary…

I’ll reach out to Henthae, the First Lady told herself, making a mental note as she helped Wenlyworth to his feet. I can fix this. I can pay her back, for what she did for us…

For me…

And then, there was the prospect of leaving the Blackway with the knowledge of what had occurred within. What had awaited them, and all their ilk who were asked to go down there during an Incursion…?

What could have been the meaning of it all?

They discussed the different options back and forth a dozen times, as a group, in smaller groups, in pairs, or some just stumbling along in stunned silence, clearly deep in debate with an internal interlocutor. Yet it seemed as time went by that they could agree on fewer and fewer details.

“What do you mean, they didn’t speak Old Mundic?” Twivona found herself asking angrily.

“Old Mundic?” Even Gwena was snorting at the prospect. “My dear First Lady, we must have you examined when we get you home.“

How dare she? How dare she speak so to her? Lady Rhaegel would be reprimanded by official letter, signed and sealed before witnesses, on threat of expulsion from the Arrealbord. Such insubordination –

What insubordination?

She almost asked Gwena what she’d just been saying, when the abortive thought gave way to the single pressing concern:

What’s happened to my mind?

She walked on in increasing puzzlement.

The radiance of the rods had blinded them to a certain degree – it was too late when the ones at the front dimmed again.

“What?”

“Look!”

The purple blades were there in the darkness ahead of them, utterly still and small, as if they were held at the seeress’s sides, way off in the distance.

Except for the unceasing drips of energy giving a sense of true motion, one could’ve been forgiven for thinking it was a trick.

“Is it real?”

“It’s not moving!”

“It’s an illusion!”

“But… the rods…”

It didn’t matter. Twivona understood. The champion, the heretic… whatever she was, she’d left them there and vanished, with a singular purpose: to kill the ones who didn’t turn back when she caught up with Twivona at the rear.

Kill them. All of them. So silently, not a whisper came back to the rest.

Twivona imagined her out there in front them, relishing the fear of the group.

She is a demon.

And the First Lady wasn’t the only one to come to such an assessment.

“No!” someone howled behind her, turning to flee, flee unthinking back towards that awful place. “No, oh no!”

Then the familiar prickle came over Twivona’s skin as an arch-diviner of incomprehensible power set a chronomantic trap about her. About all of them.

There was no fleeing. There was no escaping this. The time-bubble had never been so painful. The pressure it exerted on her chest – she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t need to. She couldn’t –

I can’t blink.

I – can’t – move – my – eyes.

She screamed, but nothing happened.

“Most of them can go quickly. I’ll kill them and drop them out.”

The sound of the girl’s voice was a girl’s no longer – it was a discordant, itching thunder. Each and every syllable drilled into Twivona’s temple, again and again and again, but there was no recoiling from it, no way to turn aside from that skull-splitting blare. It was akin to the infinite reflections in the black-glass corridor where they’d first met, where this future had been written; it was a marker of broken time, but this was being utilised as a weapon. The oppressive noise of it filled the tunnel, roaring into Twivona’s ears like they were whirlpools drinking in every limitless echo, each word a swollen inevitability, bursting with actuality.

“But you, Yular, my shivering little hare. It’s okay. You don’t get to bleed here and I’ll have that skin off in a second. Oh, gosh. Don’t look at me like that. We aren’t going to cook you. Hahahaha! Do the hounds cook the hare? All you have to do is run. That’s all.The other one took three days – I went for five. No, every step’s plotted. No healing magic on the way, you know. You go for healing, we catch you. It’s that simple. It’s gonna be tough going, but if you get through day four, I win. If she hasn’t come for you by then, she’ll give up. Who knows how long you could last… Think about it. What a gift! What a chance he never had!”

Twivona replayed the seeress’s words in her mind.

Oh… Oh gods… does she mean –

Yular’s screams filled the air. The murderess had released him from some of the bonds locking him in place, purely so that the others could listen to his misery, but Twivona welcomed it. She welcomed it. Anything, anything, except the sound of the seeress’s voice.

There was a blur to Twivona’s left, and she’d never thought she’d be thankful to be magically paralysed before, incapable of those automatic instincts that would’ve otherwise sent her eyes rolling, perceiving…

That is Yular. Losing his… Losing.

“Yes, yes, quiet down. It’s not deliberate, you know – I don’t want to be taking chunks out of you! Come on, or I’ll have to actually, you know, hurt you, and that really, really wouldn’t be pleasant… Here… yes, arm up…”

Anything… I’d die, just to stop you talking.

What signal she was interpreting as conversation, when all he was doing was grunting and screaming, only the dark powers below might’ve known.

“I never said I’d get it off in one piece. Yes, one second, but that’s, like… a whole second. A second is… I don’t even know how long…”

Then, of all things, the archmage raised her voice, as if to address the group.

“I’m sorry about this, but I have to get him started right now. I’ll be with you presently.”

Kill me! Twivona longed to screech. Kill me now!

But she was held transfixed by that most terrible of powers, beyond the reach or sight of gods or men. She was, for all her company, alone with her fate. She alone could meet it and she had to meet it alone. There was no one she could discuss it with, even if many of the people she knew and even cared for were to share the very same doom, in the same place, in the same eye-blink. There was no ending to her life. There was just this – its abrupt cessation.

She’d been so young. She’d had so much time left. Yet that was in the before, and this was the now. It’d been stolen, every last second of it. There was only one direction for her.

There was some comfort, she found, in knowing that at least she knew. She didn’t have to fear it now. She knew how it was going to happen. The shadow of mortality fell aside and for the first moment in her life, Twivona truly lived.

No matter the cost – what she left behind, what she had to suffer to see it through – the fear was gone.

Mortiforn… I know now. I know where I’m going.

Onwards.

Onwards.

This is death.

* * *

The wind wailed with a shrill fury, such that a mortal’s eardrums would burst ere they might clap hands to head, yet he could hear the servitor’s words with perfect clarity. Ms. Onyef’s voice trembled; she had never ventured to regions like these before, he knew, and it was likely she hoped the cacophony would mask her obvious trepidation.

“Of those whom thou badest me watch with especial scrutiny, we hath gathered unto ourselves but one of their souls, Mr. Owl. It falls unto me to bear thee disquieting news, and yet there may be reason for rejoicing –”

“I am aware already, though I thank thee for thy quiet diligence, Ms. Onyef. Please, depart now, and with my favour.”

He waited until the spectre vanished from the mountainside, then clenched his remaining fist.

There was no archmagery left to invest her, no more sorcerous soul-blood leaking forth from the demi-planes to save her, but Twivona had possessed the potential. He was certain of it.

That wasn’t what was troubling him, though. The loss of such an archmage to the demons – it was the work he opposed and yet could not. The gambit of Lord Suffering which none might gainsay. Yet, how the coin rolled on its edge! How it refused to topple!

It would soon fall, and the decision would be made. A smiling face, or a clutch of tails.

A soul for a soul.

He leaned again over the edge, facing into the void, and then he spun, lying back almost horizontally over the infinite drop once more, supported only by the wind coming screaming up out of the nothingness. Gazing high into Materium with his uninterruptible vision, the keen sight of the ascended vampire pierced stone and dirt, bricks and sticks, flesh and blood. He saw the hearts. He saw the minds. His consciousness opened like a flower accepting the sun, as close to omniscience as anything below a deity might hope ever to achieve.

Yet he was stymied.

Lyferin! Lyferin! – where art thou?