INTERLUDE 9J: TIMETWISTED

“You beg for omniscience. From one who has it to one who doesn’t: you do not want it. Think about it for a moment. What does that tell you? Not about yourself, but about omniscience. Do you think it pleasant, to exist as the ultimate observer? Now, take that sliver of omniscience I give to you; abandon your search before it kills you. It is too easy to know too much. It is too easy to die in advance.”

– from ‘The Notes of Timesnatcher’, recovered after the Fall

He liked to think of himself as an assistant. Not to any one person in particular – an assistant to the city itself. When he opened his door and stepped out into the bright morning sun, all the nightmares that so plagued him while he tossed and turned in bed were suddenly forgotten. He tried not to think too hard about his destination as he went on his way, letting the wind of destiny guide his feet.

His hands, too. In Hilltown he caught a little girl in a blue fur caplet just as she bounded off a pavement, dancing without a care right into the path of a two-horse cart; he deposited her back on the pavement, to the instantaneous horror of her parents. The assistant endured their disapproving stares, slipping away into the crowds without a word.

It was hard. If he used the mage robe, they would’ve fallen over themselves thanking him. If he used the mask, they would’ve screamed and fled, barely even remembering to yank their poor little girl along with them in their haste to get away. In the plain tunic, he was nobody.

It would’ve been nice to experience their gratitude in person. And in spite of everything it would’ve been funny to watch them shriek and run. It was difficult, being nobody. A mere assistant.

It didn’t help that he could see. He was deliberately stopping himself from investigating the value-quotients of his actions. He was just taking them.

And it was so liberating.

When he slapped his hand against the flap of Mr. Gold’s wagon, stopping three crates-worth of succulent golden apples from spilling out into the South Lowtown muck, it wasn’t with any particular purpose. He didn’t know whether Mr. Gold or his customers would turn this twist of fate into boon or blight – whether the availability of fruit could be transformed into some great malediction to doom the world. He no longer cared to extrapolate billions of futures in order to determine how to behave.

Just to be. Just to do what looked right because it looked right, consequences be damned. He had the power. He had the duty. The gods would demand no less than this of him as his penance for his previous zeal. And doing the right thing – it helped him. For the first time in a decade, he had something to stabilise him. An anchor in the present, not the vagaries of far futures, the bitter dregs of abandoned pasts.

He was ready to be a person again and, most importantly, he knew it in his soul. Destinies he’d never dreamt of came unbidden, filtered by his desire for ignorance, flooding his mind with tantalising hints, chips of mica glittering unglimpsed in shadow. He refused to bring them into focus, but she was there all the same.

The woman.

He would be able to lie with a woman again – even to wed. Sorrow would tinge every single minute of the remaining days of his life… but no longer would he allow it to overwhelm them. When his new beloved wife bore him a child, that sorrow would be his guide. He would remember, so as to forget. He would remain unforgiven. That alone could make him forgivable.

Not that he thought he could save his soul. He’d visited Infernum, once. He had no desire to repeat the experience, never mind extend it, but he had no misgivings as to his ultimate destination. He’d be back there some day, a native, not a tourist.

There was a kind of peace in acceptance that he couldn’t help but reject. He had to struggle. Even if it was inevitable, he had to try. Celestium was beyond his reach, but he could spend the rest of his life grasping at it, couldn’t he? What was the point, otherwise?

Acting on instinct, he took silver from his slowly-depleting fund, and purchased the fixings of a slap-up meal. A fresh turkey. A wrap of real cranberries. A couple of apples, potatoes, carrots. He was halfway to Mrs. Mrin’s house before he realised where he was headed. It’d been over a week since he’d last popped around to give her a hand in the garden, and the old dear hadn’t spoken with another person in all that time. Her son had posted a few silver under the door three days ago; other than that, she was alone, in the stink of the slaughterhouse a few doors down.

Why exactly his instincts sent him here, today, he couldn’t say – only that it was right for him to go. Would she die without his intervention? Surely not. Were the other things, more inherently-valuable things he could be doing with his morning than preparing a nice fatty lunch for an elderly widow? Almost certainly. Yet, this was where his feet led him. She’d been there for him, that day when he’d broke down. Now he’d be there for her. He’d left his web behind. Two-thirds the way down Belton Bend, with a sack stuffed with produce under his arm – this was true destiny.

He wrinkled his nose against the pervasive odour wafting up the street, and knocked with his free hand.

Rap, went his knuckles on the rough, unvarnished oak.

His wrist worked of its own accord, pure habit bending back his fist so that the knuckles could descend again.

What’s happening?

Something was wrong.

Rap, went his knuckles a second time.

He’d been intending on giving three knocks, and his wrist was sending his fist backwards again, in preparation for the final rap. Three would be enough to get her attention – he just knew it. But so much had happened in such a short time, the moment refused to come. The fist was descending, but it couldn’t finish the third knock. Not until he decided. And he was trapped in indecision.

What is it?

It was disturbing how long it took for him to reach his conclusions. That alone told him that there was a force opposing him, a force with a will and resolve like his own – or stronger.

He ran through the options, and saw only the Shadow.

It was like a fly buzzing around his head, like a street-thief slinking right behind him in a busy market square. Never there when you looked. Always there when you looked away. The Shadow haunted all of them, all those cursed with these powers – so he had been led to believe, at least. Perhaps it really was Ulu Kalar’s Return they were all getting their knickers in a knot over. But even if it was true – it was Mal Tagar whose ruinous might was being marshalled against Mund right now.

The minions of the Twelve Hells – yes, they were like the fly, like the sticky-fingered street urchin with an empty belly. But the assistant could trap a fly by a single leg. No pick-pocket ever got at his pouches. And as for the demons?

The Shadow awaits me.

As his knuckles landed against the rough oak surface for the third time, he knew.

It’s not her that answers. The smell isn’t the butchers. It’s coming from inside. I should’ve seen it if I could’ve but I couldn’t because of the Shadow, because –

He didn’t have his mask. His robe. His daggers. Any of it.

“Mrs. Mrin,” he said, voice flat.

Not a question. Not a prayer to Yune that he was wrong.

Her name would have to do for her eulogy. The chance of anyone around here surviving this had grown increasingly slim over the last one and a half seconds.

He set his fingers like claws, and when the demon inside pulled the door open, seeking his wrist to drag him within, he struck it right in the glossy canine eyes.

Inside, it was worse than the abattoir. Mrs. Mrin’s pulped remains had been used to decorate – and not just hers. The skins of dogs and rats hung like drapes, fastened to the walls by patches of pure rot. The lice of hell were trundling along the ceilings, sub-demon insects the size of house-cats.

He could see it now.

She comes in through the back door from the little garden, gloves caked in earth. She’s walking right past the wash-bowl – she isn’t done outside yet. Rath’s enthusiasm in fixing the fences and trellises on his last visit – it’s infected her too. She’s eager to keep planting. She’s got bulbs up to her ears. She’s occupied. She’s just looking for her trowel. She brought it inside when she was pottering about earlier and she put it down behind the pink-felt chair without thinking.

It would’ve taken her a good few minutes to find it, and she would’ve forgotten what she was looking for long before she stumbled on it, snatching it up in what looks to him like two-pronged relief –

But she doesn’t get the chance. That chance melts away. There’s a sound from the steep stair leading down into the cellar. An insistent chitter. A command.

The Shadow beckons her.

She opens the door to the cellar wearing an expression as though she’s already under the creature’s spell. The door creaks ajar, and the servant of Vaylech is revealed. It can only be described as a humanoid wasp; it towers, filling the space, not flying but standing upright, its darkly glistening wings folded at its bulbous yellow-black shoulders. Blank mirror eyes stare hungrily out at the woman.

The alien mouth works on the air, mandible-teeth churning, and the sound comes forth once more, words spoken in the tongue of the Twelve Hells.

Her hands drop to her sides. Her old feet carry her forwards, shuffling her towards the giant wasp entity. Her face now holds the same blankness as its eyes. Her lips tremble as its thick, matted fur trembles; her fingers are twitching like its dreadful glossy limbs.

It leans forwards and, almost gently, like a lover placing a kiss upon their beloved’s neck, its mouth reaches for her upper arm.

Clothing is no obstacle. The strange lips sink right through her sleeve and work into her bicep, withdrawing with a huge chunk of flesh, at least half a pound of her arm, hanging from the mandibles.

She moans lightly, but not in pain. It almost sounds as though she thinks she’s being tickled. At least this demon’s magic granted her that small mercy. This was undignified in the extreme, of course, but it was different to making her die screaming.

The wasp mouth chews slowly. Mrs. Mrin swoons where she stands, watching. No excess blood spurts from the wound. A coagulant is in place, working rapidly to keep her in the best of health. Keep her alive as long as possible.

After a while, the demon bends once more, this time taking a chunk from the other arm. The blood it ingests is being siphoned away from the other matter and distilled into a rarefied form, glands in the creature’s abdomen pulsing dimly beneath the surface; then, after a while, the stuff begins to mist out from behind and beneath the fiend, as though the droplets of blood are being exuded by its sword-like stinger.

Two days, Mrs. Mrin stands there under its spell, like some obscene red-painted statue in an art exhibit – until catastrophic organ failure outstrips the reach of its crude magic and she crumples down to die.

Four. She is the first of four to die in this house. Along with thirty-six animals, both pets and strays. Not one of them has a chance.

Not until him.

Now, his fingers inside the obbolomin’s face, the assistant took a purposeful stride into the room, taking the feral creature along with him. He tossed it nonchalantly into a corner as he continued on his way to the back door.

He didn’t have his weapons, no, but almost every single creature nesting in this structure was vulnerable to garden shears.

He was vulnerable to them too. Any one of them, even the big beetles, could’ve slain him.

Had he not been moving through the place at about, oh, a tenth of his potential.

Two of the hell-lice nearest the doorway sensed him immediately, and tried to drop off the ceiling onto his head. The seven as-yet untouched obbolomin, crouching in the detritus in the centre of the room and eyeing the front door with gleeful expressions on their bestial faces – they probably only caught a glimpse of the blur as it streaked past them, opening the back door, exiting, then returning and closing the door once more.

Their despair was worthless to him. He didn’t let time loose, didn’t let them know what was coming to them. A Shadow like this – it had to mean Incursion. He’d be needed elsewhere. There would be many, many people in dire need of his assistance today, after all.

He sheared the obbolomin and zikistakram, and the gaumgalamar he found creeping around the bedroom upstairs –

Then, finally satisfied, he caught the pair that’d launched themselves down at his head when he’d entered. They were still falling. He dipped the scissor-like blades upwards with unerring precision. Sliding them just inside the folds of their metallic shells, he found and pierced their vitals with ease.

The dead fell to the floor. The commotion was over. Aside from settling fluids, the house above ground was still.

He turned to the cellar door, looming ominously in the corner of the hallway.

The wasp-man was back there, at the top of the stairs behind the door, its appendages flailing. It had entered a panicked state during the last couple of seconds; surely it had somehow sensed the carnage, the deaths of its kin, bringing it back to the door where it had halted, hesitating.

And it had a smattering of eerie power that could’ve had him following Mrs. Mrin to her gruesome fate. Even though its horrid infernal voice had not yet reached his ears, he could feel its touch on his mind, like a mesh of barbs had been wrapped about his head, metal spokes punching through scalp and skull to sink directly into his brain.

Yet his amulet was a reassuring weight against his breast.

He smiled savagely, laid hold of the nailed-on handle, and yanked the door open.

“Thanks, Neverwish.”

He took the wasp-head off using a couple of deft snips with the shears, watching on in contempt as it fell back down the stairs, died, and started to disintegrate.

He followed down a couple of steps. There were no lights down here to provide illumination – just the crimson flames, the silhouettes gathered about and inside them.

It was okay. He didn’t need light to see by.

The imps and worse turned to face their creator and its destroyer. They took in the extremely-dead wasp-man, and the savage smile of the stranger who’d slain it.

Only a few, those closest demonoids well inside what they saw as his kill-zone, were desperate enough to actually try confronting him. The vast majority would seek to flee, flying or squirming past him, escaping up the stairs.

Within seven-tenths of a second, they all joined their creator. The crimson fires died with them.

It wasn’t their fault – they weren’t to know he was a seer and archmage. They’d vastly underestimated the scope of his kill-zone.

He cocked his head, listening to the sounds coming from outside. Lightning was trying to work its way across the vast open expanse above the city, expanding through the air, linking earth with heavens.

But this was no bolt of holy heaven reaching down to bless the city of Mund, no act of mage or magister crafted to blast the creatures of darkness. No – this was reverse lightning. This was a kind of carnal spite, a hunger cast up into the clouds to mar the skies – a white light that acted in defiance of gods and men, hiding the face of Kaile from sight.

They’re trying to bring the Shadow to the eyes of everyone, he intuited without delay or impediment. It’s going to go dark, and it’s going to stay that way. Forever.

He sped up the stairs to the ground floor, brandishing the shears, a grimace on his face.

He’d never held back in an Incursion before, but he’d usually restricted himself to mortal targets. There was no better time to murder a bunch of murderers. This time, though – things would be different. This time it would be the hellspawn who’d look upon him in their last moments, see the face of their destruction approaching, a demon of humankind sent to deal them a deadly riposte.

They’d vastly underestimated the scope of his kill-zone – and so had he.

Until now.

* * *

The sounds of the Mourning Bells continued rippling through the air, the stretched-out goooong! vibrating its way into his ears through a million raindrops.

Fighting for space in there with the howls of torn-apart fiends, and the unceasing lamentation of the many-headed woman leading them.

The citizens were safe – he’d taken care of that first, locking them in the building’s basement where they’d be secure for the remainder of the Incursion, providing no unforeseen burrowing demon came along. But the forces of the Twelve Hells used the brief moments of his distraction to muster a new horde to fling onto Mrs. Mrin’s garden shears.

It would’ve been easier if he’d had opportunity to find less restrictive clothing, the tunic too heavy at his hips to facilitate a proper range of movement. Something to put across his face would’ve been brilliant, never mind his accustomed weaponry. As it so happened, he hadn’t even come across a suitable scarf or mask in his travels. Instinct had compelled him and he wasn’t going to abandon the dying just to make his own life easier. He was here, now. Spell-wrought steel couldn’t save these people. Only his own sweat and sinews could accomplish it.

He snicked away another of the weeping leader’s heads, and another, and another – her vine-like necks were retracting and engorging, spitting out new ones fully-formed like a hydra. The huge shoulders swivelled about her torso and her assortment of arms went along for the ride as she drove her tridents at his face again and again – it was as though she had absolutely no trouble determining his location in spite of his speed, in spite of the tears and bawling erupting from every last one of her faces.

There was no master-route through an Incursion. There were only the glimpses and snippets. It was like trying to find your way around a district you hadn’t visited in thirty years. Some of the landmarks had gone or changed, and those that remained no longer seemed to lead the way as they once had done, guiding you now into foreign alleys, streets that seemed to loop, twist you back on yourself…

Curse the Shadow, curse all the shadows!

The imps swarmed him again – fell apart again – he leapt to meet them in mid-air and for a few seconds it was as though he fought in the midst of a cloud, their dismembered wings riding high, rising and fluttering on the wind of his blows, even as the limbs and tails and torsos went snaking down to the ground.

Surprise?

He was almost surprised, as the razor-sharp edge of a trident cut him, tearing through his pants and slicing at his ankle while he twisted in the air. It sank into him no deeper than a couple of layers of skin thanks to his reflex to pull away, leaving his tendons intact – but it shook him all the same.

He adjusted his trajectory as best he could, flipping and leaning so as to bring himself farther from the chief demon when he landed. He would sever the three hands, then go for the closest heads, before making another move for her heart…

But she’d fallen apart. When he completed his motion, spinning to look, the demon was already on the ground, deflating like a pierced lung. Even her heads had flattened, eyes and teeth popping out and rolling through the puddles.

What?

In her place, in the rain, stood a far more portentous spectre.

The weapons in Timesnatcher’s hands weren’t the verdant ones he’d used last time, ensorcelled with guaranteed non-lethality. This time the dagger in his left hand was small and white, looking incredibly fragile, as though it’d been carved from ivory. No aura surrounded it. The same couldn’t be said, however, for the jagged shortsword in his right. Its black blade seemed to draw down the storm’s own shadows, forming a coil of darkness that fumed and churned along and about its length.

“You returned,” said the hourglass mask.

Rathal only had time to glance at the white hourglasses covering the tall man’s black robe.

Every one of them just had a few grains left, now.

“You should’ve stayed dead.”

Then the harbinger of his destiny descended upon him, and instinct was all Rathal had left.

* * *

The black blade was thrust at his chest, and the monstrosity of his rival’s speed was almost enough on its own to stop Rathal’s heart.

He launched himself at the wall, forcing his body to move at overdrive, flinging all sense of caution to the winds and operating purely on that inbuilt sense of certainty he’d so-often relied upon. He landed feet-first against the vertical surface and kicked off, spinning for momentum, soaring across the street to the low rooftop of the building opposite.

When he completed the somersault, the soles of his boots crunching down onto the roof-tiles, Timesnatcher was already there. It was all he could do to bring up the shears and sacrifice them to buy himself a single instant.

The rusty, gore-smeared metal gave out a single high-pitched screech as the black ensorcelled blade tore clean through it – but by then Rathal had moved twenty feet – fifty – a hundred yards from rooftop to rooftop –

A mile, ascending and descending sheer surfaces as though they were pathways constructed deliberately for this flight, for his feet –

His shadow on his heels, every bit as fast, pure acceleration bringing both of them into a chronomantic zone wherein not a single outward effect occurred.

As he fled, the thoughts came flooding through his mind, uncontrolled, unstoppable.

This is the Shadow. My own. Of my making. He will hunt me to the ends of the earth if I go. There is only one solution.

His death.

But that means my own. I lose if I win and if I win I lose. I can’t kill him. He’s innocent. Any darkness to be found in him, I placed it there, knowingly.

It’s my shadow. If I kill it, I prove it. I become it.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

If I let it kill me, it slinks off into the world. Worse than I ever was.

Better for me that I die.

Better for the Realm that I live.

It was only as the attitude crystallised that he realised where he’d been heading.

Home.

Not the home he’d used after the birth of Duskdown, of course. That house had been occupied once more, since his trip to Zyger, first by a gang of squatters and then by a nice, poor little family paying exorbitant rents to the local crime-boss.

No, his new home. The house in which he tossed and turned, the house in which Rathal had been reborn once more, as a force of good in the world.

The house in which he’d secreted his old accoutrements. The tools of the trade. The tools of the unparalleled killer.

He was beginning to tire and he knew it. The light of the power dimmed, illuminating less and less each day, if it wasn’t properly exercised. He was slower than he ought to have been. He was weak.

Weapons would help, but they wouldn’t bring him victory. Not unless he removed the intervening object –

Stop blocking the light –

He lived every single moment of the chase. A journey which to an outside observer might’ve taken a few seconds was still minutes to him. Every footfall on wet tiles. Every desperate leap across a street. He saw victims dying to demons, frozen mid-death, and he knew, he knew the shadow pursuing him wouldn’t falter, wouldn’t turn aside to save them. That was why – why he had to keep running. Why he had to try to make things right.

One of those fractured futures appeared before his seer’s eye, almost pulling him clear off the roof with its magnetic allure, breaking his focus –

Instead of being too late and smashing the door in frustration, I am in time, in time, and instead of going with Vardae, Sol stays – she stays, and I go to her now, shield myself with her – she pleads my case, she knows, and Timesnatcher will listen as she –

She dies on the shortsword, stabbed through her heart and into my own.

Rathal corrected his footing, ducked low to avoid the swipe of the blade that came humming down at the back of his neck, and plunged onwards.

The non-existence of a future had no bearing on the veracity its contents. He knew by this vision of a failed reality that the sword Timesnatcher wielded was fatal even to an arch-druid of considerable power.

We crash through the window and I – I –

He couldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let Timesnatcher baptise himself in blood.

Timesnatcher the darkmage.

The thought of it was enough to turn his stomach. How dangerous the former champion could become. How truly formidable, once he cast off the shackles of propriety, ethics, divine mandate.

And they thought Duskdown was terrifying.

He barrel-rolled just in time, soaring off the lip of the roof and falling at an angle across the street, a long arc that no ordinary gymnast might’ve achieved.

Even to him, the experience was a blur.

The window gave way as he broadsided it, the glass pane seeming to buzz as it came first into, and then straight back out of, the chronomantic field; Rathal span through the mist of glinting shards he’d created, managing to leave them behind him as he found his footing, a barrier of deadly glass pieces hanging in the air that would just imperceptibly slow Timesnatcher, hinder him enough for Rathal to make it to the bedroom door, plunge down the stairs to the hall, the locked cupboard that would fall to pieces at his supercharged touch, release the spellbound daggers contained therein into his custody –

He got his hand on the doorknob –

Timesnatcher entered the room, behind him, sliding around the glass-shard barrier like an oil ghost. But it was good. Some part of him had feared he was so outstripped that the champion would’ve been there on the other side of the door when he opened it but, no, no – Rathal was still in the lead –

The stairway descended for eight steps, then sharply turned back on itself at a shallow landing to descend another eight. Rathal simply moved forwards, barely losing elevation, the stairs dropping out farther and farther below him as he struck the far wall with his heels and ran along it, keeping his fingers on the inside wall to guide him as he swung his body about and down.

He glimpsed Timesnatcher, just aching inches away –

Then he was careening down the lower flight of steps, using a mere slap to smash apart the ironwood cabinet…

The moment it flew asunder in a shower of splinters, the contents were laid bare to his sight. The totality of Timesnatcher’s ascendancy was laid bare.

No weapons.

“Looking for these?”

He glanced back. Timesnatcher was standing on the landing, slowly picking his way down the stairs. The daggers – Rathal’s daggers – were in his hands.

Why here? Why did I come here? A hundred – nine hundred and eighty convenient places I could’ve gone for weapons, and I… I…

Nothing notable about them. No glows, no trails of radiance. They didn’t look particularly sturdy or even sharp – and that was in large part the extent of their ensorcellment: to disguise the magnified keenness of their tips and edges; to make them resilient-enough to parry the blows of any weapon and remain in one piece.

Nothing notable about them, other than their presence now in the gloved grips of his arch-enemy.

“How did you do this?” he asked in a hushed voice, looking upon his foe with renewed respect.

“I found the little lying dwarf,” the champion returned coldly. “You covered your tracks well, the three of you. Thanks to you. But your stench came to my nostrils, even whilst I slept, keeping me from the dream. You cannot hide. There is only one place left for you to go, now.”

“And did you send Herreld ahead of me?”

Timesnatcher descended another step.

“Oh, no. He was most apologetic. We will see how he gets on now. Well, he won’t. I gave him my lover’s eyes, you know. He’ll get on fine, with all that magic at his fingertips. Barely a punishment, really. I won’t be cruel to him, unless he goes to a healer. Then I will become creative.”

“You… blinded him?”

“Oh, so you do remember her. Do you recall –” Timesnatcher paused to clear his throat, and not just for effect “– recall stamping her to the wall? By her head?“

“Alandrica!” Rathal barked, his own throat suddenly closing just the same. “You took her – you –”

You peeled it back and split the rind and I didn’t know that I still carried it inside me, the coin that stole my guilty soul away, that cloaked my genesis, that she lied and lied and it was me, me, me whose hands –

“Yes, I took her.” Timesnatcher was only on the third step from the floor now, and his tone was gloating. “I took her first. What you did was the act of a petulant child but I – I held the upper hand. I always have and always will. Your past was in my fist and I closed it!” The masked spectre looked down at Rathal’s daggers, turning them over in his hands. “You’ve taken so many lives with these things. Why? What purpose did it serve?”

“I rid the city of vermin,” Rathal grated.

“Did a plague kill all the rats? No? Why then were the tools of your trade locked away?”

“I’ve… I’m not the same.”

“You’ve changed,” Timesnatcher said heavily. “You don’t kill anymore. You’re one of the champions now. You don’t deserve to die.”

“I deserve it,” Rathal said hoarsely. He felt some of the tension leave him, and slumped down into himself. “But I – I could’ve been you. You could’ve been me. But no – because she loved you. She loved you, and she hated me.”

“You’re talking about Tyr Kayn,” Timesnatcher said, sounding surprised.

“I’m talking about Lovebright,” Rathal snapped. “Don’t call her Tyr Kayn as if you didn’t know her. Lovebright. I was a puppet in her sick play, just like the rest of you. We all had our roles. She used me to distract you and Vardae, and you’re still spouting the lines she wrote you, still acting out what she made you rehearse a million times.”

Timesnatcher reached the bottom step.

“You can’t fight, killer. Duskdown. It’s time. I always thought you’d already know that.”

The champion reached up to remove the mask beneath his hood, the daggers’ pommels awkwardly pressed into his palms by just the last two fingers on each hand so that the others were free to work the straps at the back of his head.

Rathal knew this was his chance –

He whirled, meaning to run, sprint down the hall towards the front of the house –

Timesnatcher was in front of him even as he turned and, for the first time in his life, Rathal saw the face of his enemy in person.

Long black hair with an unruly kink in the fringe; it was loose and dishevelled by the mask’s abrupt removal but the dark locks didn’t hide the hooked nose, the frosty stare of ice-blue eyes. The ascetic gauntness evident from his rake-thin form was right there in his stubbled, hollow cheeks, exaggerating his leanness, his height.

Timesnatcher might’ve been taller than him, might’ve been intimidating… but he was a kid. Rathal knew Irimar Nemmeneth was young, but to see it? The angular face was animated by a youngster’s righteous rage, unshaven but showing at best patchy growths of beard. He barely looked older than Kastyr.

“You should’ve used the opportunity to take your blades from me, sink them into my lungs.” Timesnatcher tutted, and smiled blandly. “Where is my Duskdown? Why are you making this so easy for me? Here! Star managed…”

The champion hurled the dagger in his right hand and –

Rathal stepped aside and easily caught it, but the second was cast in such a way as to strike the catching-hand, covering the distance in a tenth the time taken by the first.

And, in the same instant the blade pierced Rathal’s palm, the champion charged, moving faster still, lifting him by the scruff of his neck and thrusting him backwards.

The dagger sank through his hand and bit deep into the wooden wall that was now behind him, pinning him fast.

“Don’t you understand what I did? Haven’t you visited her grave?”

Rathal stared into the hard blue eyes, the burning pain in his hand dulling the speed of his thoughts.

“Zadhal. Where I took her to die. You may think we’re even, but you really don’t understand what I did if you do.”

“You condemned her.” The words peeled back his lips for him, releasing themselves as a bitter sob. “You think I don’t understand? You think I sought to even the score, Timesnatcher? Nothing could equal you! Nothing can touch what you did.”

Timesnatcher was nodding, grinning. His breath was acrid, sour.

“Her soul was taken by the magic of that place before it was swept clean. She was affected as much as any of the others. How many aeons she will spend, lost in Nethernum’s storms, do you think, Rathal? How long before you find each other again?”

But the tears being squeezed out by Rathal’s eyes – they weren’t those of anger.

“For all your words, all your visions,” he breathed, “you don’t see, do you? Irimar! I’ll never seek her. Never try to find her. Never… never seek true love again, even if I could. How – how can I? It was the tyrant! She dropped me in it but I chose to swim, I chose it, and now I’m Infernum-bound, Irimar. Infernum! Better this parting than… than a later one.”

“So that’s it,” Timesnatcher said bitterly.

Suddenly the champion withdrew, releasing the bunched-up cloth at Rathal’s neck and blurring to the other end of the hall.

The recoil of the motion caused him to buck and stumble, hitting the back of his head against the wall, tugging needlessly on his pinned hand.

He immediately reached across his body to yank the dagger free, loose himself. A single quick wiggle of the pommel and it was done; he dropped the knife, letting it land near its nondescript twin, and tore at the bottom of his tunic to wrap his palm.

Fingers still functioning – if with difficulty.

He moved his eyes to regard Timesnatcher, standing with his back turned, facing the far wall.

“That’s it?” he asked, repeating the champion’s last words.

Is he exposing himself because he still hopes, after all this, to taunt me into attacking him?

Or does he mean it?

“Goodbye, Rathal.”

The black-clad spectre vanished, blurring out of sight to the right, towards the front door of the house.

The assistant breathed a sigh of mingled relief and grief, then, cradling his hand, sank down to the floor, closing his eyes.

When he fully let go of time he could still hear the Mourning Bells, calling him, beckoning him back to his duty.

Give me a minute, he prayed, eyes still screwed shut. Just a minute. Then I’ll go. I promise.

But he wasn’t going to get a minute. Not even five seconds.

A muffled voice. Muted screams.

He opened his eyes, instantly finding himself back on his feet.

Timesnatcher had returned, and he wasn’t alone. His black glove was pressed about the mouth of a six-year-old, the child held firmly in front of him, facing out at Rathal.

“The amount I’ve saved – I’m owed one, wouldn’t you say? Just one?”

Timesnatcher leaned forwards, looking down into the terrified face of his captive.

“No,” Rath said in a strangled voice.

“I saved him,” the champion explained. “He’s dirty, isn’t he? Don’t you want to do it? They’re all dirty. Look at him! Look at his fate!”

“No!”

“You won’t?”

“I can’t!”

“How disappointing… but it changes nothing. The kinkalaman was about to butcher him.” A monotone quality came over the champion’s voice. “It doesn’t even affect his destiny or those around him. They’re all dead too. This death will be far less gruesome, believe me.”

“No, it won’t.“

“Ooh! There it is! Say it again.”

Rathal clamped his mouth closed.

“Say it. Use the voice again.” The champion’s free hand brought the ivory blade to the young boy’s throat. “Do it, or he dies.”

Intention accomplished action with no intervening moments: the two plain-looking daggers appeared in Duskdown’s hands, each gripped lightly at the perfect cutting-angles, damaged hand or no.

“You want me? You want this?“

“Goodbye, Rathal,” Timesnatcher intoned once more. “And greetings… my enemy.”

* * * –

The two other seers capable of following the combat were engaged in their own struggles in other sections of the city; there were none to properly witness this duel, save the gods. The thousands who caught a glimpse of the struggle between Timesnatcher and Duskdown didn’t even know what it was they’d seen, recognising only the destruction in its wake – the dark blur screaming through the air and the property damage it left behind was as likely the work of the Incursion’s own black storm as anything else. It entered houses, shattering windows and raking the shelves of their contents, streaking up and down stairs, smashing its way out only to do it all over again in the house across the way. The blur tore through wooden walls, sailing in hundred-yard arcs through the sky before crashing again to the rooftops. It rippled left and right across roadways, separating into distinct hues for less than a blink before converging again in renewed, frenzied combat.

The identity of Rathal had been left behind in that dimly-lit house he’d been calling home these last months. Rathal couldn’t survive this. He’d gone soft. He’d barely expressed the first limits of his power during the chase, when he should’ve been pushing at the third or fourth boundaries. No. Rathal couldn’t exist in this circle of death, not without withering instantly. He was good for nothing. Stay in that cold so-called ‘home’. Console the cringing kid. That was what he’d been good for.

The kid…

To save that little child, Rathal had stepped away from conscious existence and Duskdown had taken control again, a wet morass of a mind-state, its tangled roots knotted in the depths of an unfathomable guilt, draining the world of every droplet of joy and feeding it all to the glorious buds of murder that flowered forth. Duskdown knew he wasn’t real. He knew he was Rathal’s projection, a shield and a weapon in one. But that meant nothing. If anything, it made him more real. Flesh made metal to wield because metal was hard when flesh was soft. Metal over flesh. Life and death over living, dying.

Duskdown over Rathal.

And Duskdown found this easy.

Timesnatcher was doubtless a skilled opponent. He’d clearly devoted himself to the study of martial technique in his spare time, almost enough to rival Duskdown’s own style. The champion’s timing was superb, and his intuitions went deep, like a fortify player who could see the moves his opponent would make ten goes in advance. Duskdown was on the offensive, and no matter the direction of approach he chose for his blades Timesnatcher always managed to parry, spinning when Duskdown twisted in order to catch the upswung backhand, shrinking to intercept the overhead stroke as Duskdown loomed. Then, just when he thought he was getting close, Timesnatcher would place his foot two inches away from the anticipated footing and everything changed – he was forced to defend – he was forced to parry, dart and dodge –

It was peerless. The exponential projection, stronger than it’d ever been. A performance Duskdown had never before imagined, nor thought to. This was an encounter that should’ve never been permitted to happen, an event fed fat by unseen hands until it burst forth into this incomprehensible series of acts of violence.

There were other factors, though, that couldn’t be learnt by scrutinising visions and books. Tricks designed to fool those who possessed the future-sight, tricks designed to trap seers who thought they knew how to fight. Timesnatcher hadn’t been active many years, yet he’d already duelled a large number of arch-diviners – that had been plain to tell after just the first two or three seconds of blow-exchanges. Duskdown was not engaged with some mere stripling, here. Timesnatcher was a deadly foe, one whose challenge was to be taken seriously. The champion had actually improved since that day at the wedding, when Duskdown had allowed them to take him in under Feychilde’s arm. Irimar had been quite impressive, even back then.

And yet…

Not one of the champions ever suspected the sheer quantity of dark archmages Duskdown had disposed of over the years. Especially diviners, whose presence in the city might not have ever been registered by Mund’s formal defenders. But it was only by existing in the underworld that Duskdown existed at all. He heard things, saw things, things the others like him might never come across even in their wildest visions.

It fell to him to rid the city of vermin, after all. This was little different.

Feints within feints within feints. Like unravelling a mess of laces, he worked at Timesnatcher’s work, reacted to his reactions, picking through the surface edges to expose facets of the core beneath. Find a feint that exposed a true attack, an extension of the arm that could be leveraged into a new string of strikes. Find a meeting of blades that hid a true defence, a retracting motion that could be chased into an open armpit, a waiting organ…

The road ahead was clogged with demons – demons feasting on magisters and innocents, frozen mid-bite. Duskdown delivered a few dozen slashes at his enemy, the pair of them still careening onwards like an out-of-control centrifuge, whilst a tiny, transparent portion of his awareness consulted his future-sense. He knew Timesnatcher was doing the same. Their destinies were woven about one another’s, and the futures they saw could only diverge by so much as a hair’s breadth.

They left the magisters, the innocents, and sped instead into a cramped little side-road. It was a dead-end, terminating just twenty yards off at the windowless back wall of a warehouse. It didn’t matter. The fight would continue up the sheer wall, and across the roofs.

As if rehearsed, they split apart, each creating a new burst of momentum by climbing and descending the inward faces of the buildings leading up to the warehouse —

Like ants crawling up a cord that had been twisted along its length, they came together and around one another once more at the base of the wall; the dagger in Duskdown’s left hand met the black shortsword, the weapons biting into one another at weak-points, the imperceptible not-yet-fractures only arch-diviners of their calibre might have found –

Apart, together, apart, together. They ascended to the roofs and, three hundred and twelve distinct blows later, set down at its edge, taking up their proper placements as the chaos simply continued.

It wasn’t particularly high – thirty-six feet or so – and yet it felt as though they duelled now on the lip of some precipice. Dropping even a yard or two could be fatal – the gods alone knew how many different visions Duskdown had come across in which some unfortunate fool cracked their head open while trying to slide down a bannister, or broke their spine hopping down off a low wall. Seers weren’t able to fall prey to such happenstance accident. For arch-diviners there was almost always a way to convert a tumble into forwards velocity. Taking a forty-foot fall was no harder than leaping a waist-high hurdle. Child’s play, with a little experience under the belt. Rain-slick surfaces were not a real obstacle, not when you could adjust for tension. Ice could be tricky, but rain? No. Not once.

Yet here, now, this drop to the street became something else entirely. Certainty reduced with every yard, every inch, yawning away until the South Lowtown roadway might’ve sat at the uttermost bottom of an abyss, an ocean floor devoid of water, of life. There was something wrong to it. Almost as though one of them would die, down there on the paving slabs.

Falling – it was the work of the Shadow. But the Shadow of the Incursion, or of Timesnatcher? It was impossible to say; he only knew the edge of the roof screamed danger.

His foe knew it too, and there was nothing either of them could do despite their conscious control of their actions – they led one another away from the edge, following the path inscrutable destiny had laid down for them. Away from the Shadow, still dancing, blades silently slicing the air until they clashed, biting once more, metallic clamour cutting through time and space to shriek in their ears.

It threatens each of us. One or both of us will have to go over the edge and that will be it.

And as soon as the thought burned its way through his skull, he saw it.

Victory – in under three seconds. Five thousand strikes or fewer. All he had to do was keep the fight here. Stop Timesnatcher changing the location, stop these desperate attempts to find a terrain that would let him kill Duskdown. It would all be over, so very soon.

Once he knew it, his foe saw it too.

Sixty-three times, Irimar sought to flee, north then east then south, then east then south then north, always adapting, always failing. The three cardinal directions that didn’t lead into Shadow. Each time his opponent tried it, Duskdown moved to intervene, block the attempt with a hail of deadly blows. Timesnatcher’s futile desire to flee only loaned Duskdown an ever-increasing share of confidence.

Driven to breaking-point, the enraged Timesnatcher threw caution to the winds of fate, shattering the vision, performing a desperate lunge at Duskdown’s throat with the shortsword.

Duskdown halted and bent back at the waist, allowing Timesnatcher to step in, the stroke going wild over Duskdown’s upturned face, missing the tip of his nose by at least three hair’s breadths.

His rival was within range of both daggers, their bodies less than twelve inches from the other’s. The ivory knife was still moving away, nowhere near prepared to strike or parry.

But Duskdown didn’t know how to end it. Instead of burying the blades in his enemy’s chest, he released his upper body like a coiled spring, coming up inside Timesnatcher’s guard and smashing his forehead directly into the hooked nose with the force of a trap snapping shut.

Timesnatcher’s nose exploded, broken cartilage spreading across his face; his eyebrows sank in, the front of his skull a concave mess.

The energy of the contact sent Irimar spilling on his back on the wet tiles, skittering out of the chronomantic effect.

Grunting, Duskdown released his own magic, joining his foe in the rain and breathing deeply.

Gong! Gong! Gong!

Half-voiced screams suddenly split the air. The change was jarring, and he spent a moment sorting his thoughts. There were things to be done, the fixing of minor irritants like the crude bandage about his palm – but he was distracted. Had it not been for this unnatural darkness pervading the midday skies, it would’ve almost been easy to forget inside the time-bubble that an Incursion was in full swing.

Timesnatcher was spluttering and groaning, trying to lean up, sit. His hands had abandoned their weapons and were now clumsily patting down the robe’s pockets, probably in search of a healing elixir.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Duskdown said, advancing until his mere nearness stopped Timesnatcher’s futile fumbling, hands and head sinking back to the tiles. “You lost. It’s over.”

A lightning-bolt stabbed across the skies behind him, its radiance casting his shadow across the fallen champion. Thunder rippled as he raised the knife in his right hand.

Irimar lifted his head an inch again, bitter blue eyes boring holes into Duskdown, then flicking across to the knife’s ordinary-seeming blade.

“Oo’i, en,” he brayed. “Oo’i!“

Irimar’s speech was garbled, but Duskdown knew what he was trying to say.

‘Do it, then. Do it.’

Duskdown slowly brought the dagger across, holding it in front of his face to join his enemy in looking at it.

The same wrongness surrounded it.

“This one’s not for you,” Rathal murmured.

It was pure instinct. It was doing the right thing. As though to discard it, toss it aside into the waiting Shadow, he hurled it to the right. To the west. Out of sight, out of mind.

At the same instant, pure white light bathed down upon them, as though the cast-aside dagger had ripped a hole through the walls of Celestium in its wake, releasing beams of Kaile’s holy radiance across the rooftop.

He couldn’t comprehend what had happened to Duskdown. His first reaction was a strong surge of fear – Rathal’s identity had been pushed back to the forefront and without the mass-murderer he wasn’t going to be able to continue the fight, if Timesnatcher should find one of his hidden potions… He’d stuffed it all up, coming out of the chronomantic field when he did, listening to the screams of the dying. He should’ve endured an instant longer, should’ve slain Timesnatcher when he had the chance…

He stared down at the defeated champion on his back, properly illuminated now for the first time. The eyes – the hardness in them had melted. It was only ice on the surface. Beneath, his eyes were cloudy. Unsure.

Human.

Irimar…

He couldn’t. Couldn’t let Timesnatcher change him back into the killer. It wasn’t just that he chose otherwise – it was simply impossible. Duskdown had surrendered the reins; the mass-murderer passed the test, and the personality died within him. Rathal couldn’t revisit that place. It had been levelled, new structures built up in its foundations.

Maybe he’d been wrong from the outset. Maybe if Timesnatcher killed him, it would be the champion’s first step on his path to redemption.

I gave you one final outing, Duskdown, he said into the recesses of his soul. You were there for me when I needed you. I… loved you as much as I hated you, I think.

He’d thrown the upraised knife –

But what did I mean – not for him? That just doesn’t make any… any sense…

He continued to hold Timesnatcher’s agonised gaze and, as though they were still conjoined in destiny, together they turned their faces west, Rathal looking to his right, Irimar to his left.

Directly into the light.

The light of a dweonatar’s eyes.

* * *

The ensorcelled dagger was barely discernible in the bright glare, but it had struck true; its handle now protruded from the bridge of the demon’s nose, quivering from the residual force of the impact.

That alone told Rathal the arch-demon’s chronomancy rivalled his own. He knew little of such creatures, beyond the fact they should be avoided at all costs.

It was drawn up tall, head and shoulders visible above the edge of the roof, along with the upper portions of its wings. It turned its serene face to Rathal in a single snapping motion, and spoke to him directly.

He lowered his own eyes, squinting, and listened to its curious voice. The Infernal pouring forth from between its marbled lips was guttural, hideous… and completely incomprehensible.

It must’ve quickly recognised its mistake because it supplied a translation, and, if anything, its Mundic was even worse. The snarling sound was that of a heartless wolf gifted with human speech, utterly at odds with its beautiful, heavenly appearance.

“And this one is not meant for you, son of hell. Do not seek to interfere, else share his doom.” Its head snapped about again, turning its unbearable gaze away from Rathal, casting the glare onto the prone diviner instead. “I come only to collect my Sister’s slayer, for Mother’s gratification.”

Rathal watched on as Timesnatcher’s hands went crawling bit by bit across the tiles, seeking his weapons’ grips.

“Well?” Rathal asked quietly.

Irimar’s gaze met his again, and he could see only the hate again, only the ice in those hard eyes.

“If you ask me, I’ll help you. I’m sorry about Perri, okay? We can fight it together. But I hear the same screams you do. People who can’t fight back. People with more to lose than you. People with… less to give…”

He really could hear them, the yelps that came from ragged throats and direst need –

Less than fifty yards away – Dandrika Eltin Frake was being sawn open, imps swarming her chest with pouches woven of hair in their claws, collecting her heart’s-blood and chattering to one another without a care.

Her two children watching from the corner of the torn-asunder room.

They would be next. There’s less blood in them than there’d been in their mother and right now they are after quantity, not quality. The kids are lower priority, but still worth decanting.

The dweonatar was smiling ear to ear.

It knew. It knew.

“Ask, Irimar,” he begged.

But the champion only had eyes for the pommel of his sword.

“Go,” Irimar said thickly, choked by the pain of his ruined face. “Go.“

The champion had recovered the ivory dagger, and he was dragging himself towards the shortsword. As much as Rathal found himself pitying this husk of a man, this man who had been a saviour to many, and his sole sworn enemy…

He understood.

He puts Dandrika’s children above himself. For that reason alone I should save him. He isn’t lost. Not yet.

And if I thought he hated me now…

I’ll be the lost one, Irimar, without you by my side.

There was no way around it. It was the diviner’s trap – to see it, to know he had to walk into it, having no better option.

“Farewell, Irimar,” he replied softly. “May your fate treat you more kindly than mine.”

He looked across at the arch-demon, whose satisfied smile sickened him.

“He’s all yours.”

The last glimpse he caught of Timesnatcher as he sped off the lip of the roof, the hero was back on both feet, a haunted look on his pulverised face. A burning chain was flying up to intercept the champion’s initial probing attacks and the smile was still there, twisting the demon’s lips.

Then Rathal descended into the Shadow, and was gone.

Once Dandrika’s children were secure, her death avenged upon the demonoids who’d been responsible for taking her life, he became distracted by a nest of folkababil – it was seconds before he found a moment to check the warehouse roof for any signs of the confrontation.

And there was nothing, even when he went to the trouble of visiting the surrounding streets. The arch-demon left behind no trace but the riven paving slabs where it had stood and paced; Timesnatcher, the chief leader of the city’s champions, was no longer there to be found.

Had he been taken? Had he been slain? Was his soul now in the laps of undead, undying dragons, awaiting the time of Returning – awaiting the moment of consumption, Ulu Kalar’s hungering tongue poised above this dearest of treasures, this most-potent of delicacies?

Boltor Cinchbrook was screaming from his bedroom as a thastubabil entered the house, its aura of fear extending right up the stairs, creeping in under the closed bedroom door, sliding beneath the quilts with him.

Rathal didn’t sigh. Boltor was a coward, but how brave would Rathal have been without the second-sight? He remembered hiding beneath his bed-sheets during Incursions, waiting, praying for it all to be over soon.

How brave was he, even with his magic? He’d just left the Realm’s most-valuable defender alone to face certain death, and that man had even indulged his excuses, sending the abominable murderer off to the relative safety of an imp spawning-pit.

With his last act, he saved me.

Me.

That last word – Duskdown thought it.

His life for mine.

I’ll make it worth it, Duskdown promised silently.

And when he fixed his future and blazed a trail through South Lowtown, the seer didn’t move at Rathal’s pace. The assistant was gone.

Duskdown, the champion, was born, and every fiend pouring into the plane within a mile of the Greywater would come to rue it.