The heath in Treetown was already ringed by archmages, the elements of our wizards and illusions of our enchanters lighting the scene, almost to the point where it looked like it was still daytime. They’d turned off the rain, here at least. Our target was a nearly-treeless mound of earth, just a few copses of leafless birches nestled on the eastern slope. Gorse brush and thistle were the stubble on the hill’s cheeks, but it was upon the crest of the rise that everyone’s attention was focussed.
She was there, right in front of us. Unmoving. Invisible.
It was hard to believe, but I was staring at a dragon – a dragon of an elder line, apparently, given her native power-level. One of the most fearsome creatures in existence.
Seeing would be believing. Once our enchanters were ready to assault her, strip away the veil, we would see it. We would believe.
And, for whatever reason, she was just sitting there, waiting for us to gather.
It wasn’t just archmages. There were at least ten magister-bands buzzing around, setting up wards, preparing their spells and their anti-draconic arsenals; the heath was too broad for us to cover it in a weave, even with this many of us, but we could get ready for the moment we advanced up the slope. The Rainbow’s Edge and the Constellation were also here, mage-champions desperate for a piece of the pie; their sorcerers had summoned a veritable army of lesser demons, and I could sense without looking that more were arriving by the second.
There were several links at different levels; Spiritwhisper was my current switchboard, reading my intentions and filtering my thoughts through to the right people accordingly. ‘Easy’, he’d called it. It sounded like a nightmare to me.
Zakimel, Killstop and Dimdweller were engaged in a heated debate with Elkostor, Shadowcloud and Stormsword. The wizards had been preparing masses of magic, ready to give the dragon everything they had, and keeping it pent-up like this was putting them on edge; the diviners were telling them to wait until Timesnatcher arrived.
“Please tell me this isn’t a massive, massive trap,” I thought worriedly to the other champions.
“Feychilde, losing his nerve,” Winterprince commented. “I didn’t think you’d be quite so upset after losing to me, but here we have you…“
“Winterprince, using a link for once, only to act like a…”
I sighed. In my heart I knew he was only attacking me as a cover for his own humiliation, and I could pull at that, tease him over his desperation to save face in the wake of what had happened – but what would be the point? Here, now, possibly just moments away from engaging a winged engine of pure destruction in combat? That would just be on his level.
“Drop it, yes, I lost my nerve. I lost it when I uncovered a dropping dragon in the dropping wardrobe and saved your dropping ungrateful ass! Can someone with a brain that isn’t covered in a layer of permafrost confirm that this – isn’t – a – trap?”
“This isn’t a trap,” Star thought immediately. “Nor is it a confrontation.”
“Not a confrontation?” Glimmermere’s voice was very quiet, very tense. “I can feel her there. I know how big she is. She’s real.”
“She’s real,” I repeated under my breath, staring at the hill.
Zel, any luck yet?
I’d set my fairy on the dragon’s wards what felt like ages ago now, and hadn’t had a report back.
“This is crazy, Kas,” she replied tersely. “Crazy. If I thought Henthae or Dreamlaughter were tough… give me a dozen Dreams… I’m… This is disturbing, on so many levels.”
“I can’t break through her invisibility,” I thought at the champions.
“We’re workin’ on it,” Spirit replied tersely. I could see him with the other enchanters, heads bowed in small groups, clearly pooling their powers somehow. “Soon, we’ll start, and you’ll see.”
But the sand in the hourglass had drained, and when Timesnatcher arrived, the storm of his chronomancy bringing through his band to the fore of the crowd, everything changed.
Lovebright came walking down the hill towards him, and he strode up through the tall weeds to meet her.
Hush fell across the space, both physical and psychic, even the demons receiving quiet commands to be silent.
Lovebright had removed her mask – no, the illusion wore no mask; it was different – and now, with the unveiling of her true nature, the image’s delicate beauty had been revealed for the facade it truly was. Joceine Tamaflower was a pretty picture, nothing more. No more real than Dream had been – Dream, one of her victims, one of those we’d still not come across…
No, the exposure of her real identity made every trace of beauty on her features into a mockery: each careful brushstroke of the artist was a sly dig at the vanities and lusts of humans beings, every expression of care and warmth a blasphemy. This thing ate us, swilled our skeletons in its stomach to brew its breath…
Gods above, how many people must she have eaten, since she arrived here?
“Shh,” Zel hissed. “She’s about to speak to him.”
At least she didn’t look caring and warm now. She looked distraught, if anything.
“T-Timesnatcher.”
They were a hundred yards from me, but that was no obstacle. The illusion spoke with the enchantress’s typical Northman accent, yet the torment… the torment in her voice, that was new.
“Lovebright. Softsmile. Quietsigh. Appropriately unobtrusive names, I suppose. You’ve been a busy girl, haven’t you? What do I even call you?”
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“She – I –“ Lovebright looked over her shoulder fearfully, as if glancing back at the dragon only she was able to see. “Her n-name is Tyr Kayn. Timesnatcher…“
I felt the collective wincing that went through the crowd at that name.
So she is a Tyr.
Almost as bad as an Ord.
But Timesnatcher was cutting her off coldly. “’Her name’? You mean your name.”
“I-I’m Joceine Tamaflower – Jocey, if y-”
“No.” Timesnatcher’s voice was hard, flat. “You don’t get to do that. We know. We all know. That’s going nowhere.”
“You don’t understand!” the enchantress burst out. It wasn’t quite a sob; there was too much bitterness mixed into her sorrow for that, but tears were coursing down her face all the same. “I was only b-born the night you almo-”
She swallowed, a dry sound.
“Almost kissed me,” she choked, “and I – I know what’s happening to me – I know who I am, what I am – but – she was wrong – she failed! Don’t you see, she failed! You were stronger. You were always going to be the strongest one. I thought – after she used Feychilde to kill them –“
After what now?
I felt myself flushing, saw some of the others glancing at me, unnerved.
“– I could make everything as it was, put the pieces back together, for us, and –”
“I tire of this.” For all the gravity with which he spoke, Timesnatcher sounded shaken. “You can no longer court my favour, Tyr Kayn! Do you hear me up there?”
He stepped forwards and swept his arm at the crest of the hill, shouldering right through Lovebright.
Though when she went crashing on her back in the grass, whimpering, biting back a yelp of pain and shock, even he paused, looked down at her.
“You aren’t real,” I heard him whisper to himself.
“She isn’t real, Timesnatcher!” Glancefall muttered over the link.
“I know. She isn’t… getting to me…”
But Lovebright was talking, and she was getting to me.
There was no way she was lying.
“I’m real. I am real! It was – the Ceryad – it was too much and she made me and all along, all along I knew it – why do you think I chose ‘Lovebright’? It was because of Lightblind! All along, it was you. Lightblind, the girl you really loved. And then he took her from you and I could feel your hurt, I could feel it in me and –“
“Shut up!” Timesnatcher screamed, levelling a finger at her as she lay there on the ground. “You aren’t real! Lovebright was my friend – Lightblind, she…”
There was just a hint of ironic laughter in the seeming’s weeping. Just enough to be human.
“I’m dying,” she managed to say. “L-Lovebright is dying! Please – let me stay. If sh-she leaves, I’ll die, and I – I don’t want to die –“
“She’s a monster,” I thought, feeling the permafrost in my own brain. The icy coldness that elided concerns, caution, bringing down the mask of battle. “She made Lovebright… real. As a last gambit.”
“She g-gave the seemin’ a soul?” Spirit sounded ill. “The Ceryad can do that?”
“Kill it,” Stormsword begged. “Kill it, now.”
“Kill it,” someone else said.
“Kill it!” the roar was taken up.
“It won’t work,” I caught Timesnatcher saying from his position, halfway up the hill; my outer ears worked better than my inner one, such was the tumult over the link –
The cries of the druids were being lost in the chaos.
The first attacks began, and the centre of the heath suddenly dropped away into the earth, leaving Timesnatcher standing right beside the lip that overlooked the new crater.
The dust that rose was whipped up and combined into a solid block of material, coalescing on the air into a huge, glistening weight, and then the hammer-head came dropping straight back down to strike.
At the same time, an inverted forest of shimmering icicles coalesced and descended, thousands of branching configurations, tens of thousands of frozen spears gleaming in the night as they fell into the pit –
Anything but fire against a Tyr.
“– not down there!” I caught Jaevette bellowing, echoing another druid – many of them had taken flight, searching the skies frantically, shrieking their sudden panic to the invisible, airborne teams –
“What a rabble,” I caught Winterprince snarling derisively; I could see him, already up there with them –
“Damn it!” Stormsword was raging.
“She’s already gone,” Timesnatcher managed to make himself heard. “She could hear our thoughts, even with her power broken. She wasn’t going to let herself be harmed.”
He was kneeling beside Lovebright, and, as the wizards aborted their pre-planned strikes and took off hunting the elusive behemoth, the arch-diviner took the young woman’s fading body into his arms. Her flesh, her robe – she was pulsing with ever-increasing rapidity, and between each vanishing she only returned to our world with less colour, less opacity.
“I’m leaving you,” Lovebright whispered. “I’m going. And I’ll never… never come back… I’m so sorry…”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Timesnatcher said soothingly. “You were her victim as much as any of us.”
There was a smile on the seeming’s lips. “Us. I was one of you. I was… if only… for a few days… Don’t… Don’t let them forget me.”
He shook his head.
Her eyes closed, and she stilled in his embrace.
“Netherhame?” Timesnatcher thought.
“I’m here.” The sorceress wasn’t one of those who’d scattered; she floated forwards, a purplish shadow with more solidity to her than the dying Lovebright.
“Can you?” he asked.
I saw as the tall champion shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, Timesnatcher. There’s… there’s nothing there.”
It was interesting that she said that. I could feel something there, even at this distance.
A wraith.
She was sparing his feelings, even if he knew it. And Lovebright’s personality, even if it had managed to find an imprint in Nethernum through the Ceryad’s power, would surely be contaminated. Something you could never trust, a shard of an evil creature’s will made manifest through soul-sickness and self-delusions…
Timesnatcher’s arms were empty. He rose to his feet, lifted his face to the wind –
“It’s started,” he said softly in a tone of wonder, as though speaking unconsciously and only to himself. “That’s why Ryntol Wood gets set on fire. It’s not the dragon. This time, they come for us.”
Our forces were scattered over the area; we had no battle-formation to speak of. Our grand orchestrator was still befuddled, still putting the pieces together. Only a sense of mounting doom in the air gave warning.
“Back! Get back!” Killstop yelled, at the same time as Zakimel cried: “Code thirty-two! I repeat, code thirty-two!”
Heretics. They were coming for us – here.
I was tired. It had been an incredibly long-feeling day, and I was starting to get so used to the druids’ little pick-me-ups that I hardly noticed the difference now. I hardened my heart, raising my fingers, my forces.
These are murderers.
My shields blossomed and bloomed over the grass, but where my farthest barriers rippled into life they suddenly fizzled away, coming into contact with the brutal blades of blue and red forces, the spells of Hierarch-sorcerers and their eldritches, shields that preceded them as they stepped out of their doorways.
“… unanticipated numbers…”
“… you get back, damn it! If you…”
“… glyph a message to Doomspeaker…”
They were coming out everywhere, contingents of fresh spell-casters, engaging the wizards and druids stretched across the skies: figures resplendent in rags and coarse woollen robes. Some wore scarves or cheap masks upon their faces, while many didn’t care, baring their identities for all to see as they flew or hovered about us.
So many of them.
One of them on the ground to my right intoned her challenge in a rich, throaty voice, her accent no less coarse than her hooded raiment:
“Champions of Mund! Dogs of the Magisterium! Well met! and farewell.”
Even as she spoke she raised her hand, and lightning leapt down and out, shredding one of Netherhame’s barriers.
“Hierarch Thirteen,” someone intoned, dread in their trembling voice.
There was no parley here. No trading of insults and threats.
They fell on us like a pack of wolves descending on rabbits trapped out in the open, and before we knew what was happening it was too late for us to escape.
The battle was joined, and we were committed, for good or for ill.