The effect was akin to chopping into the trunk of a tough old tree. No golden axe of divine execution appeared to hang in the air over the dracolich’s unmoving head. The wave of power generated by Glaimborn was reflected back, pale dapples of light rippling upwards and dissipating harmlessly into the darkness.
Durgil looked down, watching as some of the heavier motes of light drifted like snow, spattering across the surface of the dragon’s vile effluent and fading away.
It felt wrong. Something was amiss.
Durgil swung back his arm for a second attempt.
A third.
He cast about in disarray, catching the eyes of his brothers. He could see the same alarm on their faces.
Within thirty seconds they had formed an impromptu death-squad, each of them hacking in rhythm, a team of miners desperate to break a star-iron ore vein.
Even if they’d had ensorcelled pick-axes, they would’ve failed. The level of power required to chop through the dracolich’s neck-scales was beyond them, despite the fact they’d torn similar scales asunder all over its body.
Durgil was no stranger to limitations. He’d seen his fellow Knights fight bravely in Incursions, but he was under no illusion as to the scope of their abilities. No Knight had ever turned the tide of a battle. For them were the minions, the low-rank war-fodder that came pouring out of the Twelve Hells whenever the dimensional gates were thrown down. He’d defeated a kinkalaman, once, in a one-on-one duel; he’d taken part in the destruction of a thinfinaran, one of the devastating so-called ‘white knights’ of Infernum. But that had been with overwhelming numbers, and two chapter-masters from other holy orders had perished before the attempt was proven upon the smoking armoured corpse of the demon. Durgil knew that Kultemeren was not omnipotent; it was not as if all of creation was under the Judge’s direct influence, and the Lord’s sway waxed and waned as time and place dictated. Kultemeren might’ve been the greatest of the gods, but his throne was not alone, separate from those of the others – this all the faithful with even lay knowledge could understand. Their Celestial Father could not strengthen their arm such that one of his Knights might single-handedly turn back the armies of fiends – even the boldest champions of the grace-granted archmages were not so endowed. It fell to the paladins to do their part, guided by prophecy and instinct to those tasks which lay within their capabilities. Mother-Chaos was real, all too real.
But how was this not their part? A whole chapter had been sent, to destroy a single foe. How was it that the visions had been bestowed upon them, how was it that the Seals of Legitimacy had been formed upon the Prophets’ scrolls, if this was not their victory? Was there something more they had to do, something beyond merely separating the dracolich’s head from its snaking neck?
He stepped back wearily, almost overcome by the sudden temptation to run, scramble away up the slope and escape back into the tunnels leading up, back into the brightness awaiting them up there, on the outside… He leaned gratefully on Glaimborn once more, and closed his eyes, burying himself in contemplation.
He should’ve known, even when he’d been running towards it. Should’ve known, when there was none of the tell-tale recoil as he burst its invisible shields. He understood why it refused to enter an insubstantial state – if anything that would’ve only amplified the harm his holy strikes caused it – but that didn’t explain why it didn’t armour itself. Why it made itself visible.
Why, when it had outmanoeuvred them at every turn, did it land in front of them and let them have at it? It was likely that the dragon had no eldritches remaining to it, given the sheer number of skeletons it’d employed, and yet –
Where is its breath-weapon?
“Do you still not understand, Sir Durgil?”
It looked dead, and there was no heaving of the gargantuan chest, no wheeze as exposed lungs filled and deflated. Yet the lips curled, the eyes reignited, swivelling to focus their gaze at him.
And there it was – the sound of the dracolich’s voice, crackling and booming, like lightning shattering old trees, sending them crashing blackened to the ground. The creature tried to speak softly, its tone one of amusement, but at Durgil’s proximity the tumult was nauseating in its effect.
The stone didn’t shake underfoot. All the same Durgil was not alone as he was driven back, the mental impact of the dragon’s continued survival striking him worse than any physical blow or sonic strike.
He stumbled, and gasped, the pain in his knee suddenly flaring up, magnitudes worse than ever before. He felt teeth, tearing into tendons, felt the bitter pain of a kneecap splintering in two. A wordless yelp thrust itself up, out of his stomach, peeling back his lips and hurling itself into the air. He went down, clutching at himself, gulping the rotten atmosphere of the cave between mouthfuls of agony-fed bile.
When he looked up once more, it was slowly coalescing into its former shape, every dissection rotting as it was fixed, each tear gradually mending, dripping. The wet mess of its hindquarters solidified, bit by bit, the tail forming out of fleshy sludge as it pressed its rump into the revolting puddle. There was a faint rustling, an almost-crunching sound, as shattered bones found their places.
The odours released by its transformation were overpoweringly sweet, the rancidness filling Durgil’s skull. At another time it would’ve been enough to unman him, unmake him, send him vomiting to the floor. But he was already there. Already staring up with wet, hopeless eyes.
A single claw, as long and delicately-wielded as a jousting lance, reached up into the air, plucking a huge black crown from pure nothingness and casually flipping it about, settling it atop the horned head. Just from the sheer size of it, the trinket had to weigh more than fifty men, but the dragon bore its burden as though it were a feather. Upon the horns of the enormous serpentine brow, it looked positively dainty, a trinket of no great consequence.
“Despair is my chief weapon.” Even as Durgil stared the dragon rose up, its neck arching to elevate the head, the speed and sheer fluidity of its motion startling. “In battle, the telling blow with such a weapon cannot be achieved at a single pass.”
The dragon’s right forepaw came up then nonchalantly stamped down again, crushing a nearby transfixed knight beneath its tremendous limb. The man made not a sound, leaving the plane without so much as a whimper, but the sanctified steel plate in which he was clad screamed as it was rent asunder.
“It is achieved through a series of entirely avoidable reversals,” the evil creature went on, “bringing you here, to this point.”
The upraised head looked down, the dragon’s crown combined with its bearing to make it appear almost regal, its burning eyes raking the environment, moving from one knight to the next.
“Upon the very first application of pressure, the razor-wire garrotte spills your victim’s life-blood to pool at their feet; yet it takes more to bite through a man’s spine… A dwarf’s spine.”
Why? croaked the dry voice of despair in the champions’s mind. Why this? Why me?
One by one, the last members of the Whisper’s Predicate were extinguished.
Sir Pent was sliced in two where he knelt, blubbering. Lord Shebril was hissed-upon, deluged in a poison breath so caustic that no faith, no flesh, endured when the clouds parted. The youngest knight remaining to them, Sir Lilaire, had his breastplate, ribcage and the whole front of his torso stripped away by the swift incision of a talon, left exposed and bisected upon the rocks.
And then he was alone. The last paladin.
You abandon me – now, Kultemeren?
You dare abandon me now?
“You thought to become chapter-master, did you not?” The dragon’s tone of voice was playful as its immense claws set about their work, reducing Durgil’s friends, his family, to tatters of flesh and cloth, chunks of riven metal, toying with their remains like a toddler tearing idly at grass. “Always, even amongst the silent paladins of the Almighty Judge, there is the thread of doubt in truth, that single, singular trap lying in wait inside every heart, whether it beats or no.” It kneaded the remains of the paladins, and the scraps came skittering from all across the stony basin, joining the ball of amalgamated awfulness beneath its paws. “Ego,” it went on. “The desire for attainment. For meaning. To pass beneath the archway. But it’s nothing more than a paradox. The thread is tugged, and every drop of blood flows along it, leaving the shell a dry, emptied husk. Truth is no more real than the doubt it swears upon as its foundation-stone, its unapprised assumption gnawing at its core, a hole aching for a key…”
“Why.”
The dwarf’s voice cracked and popped as he spoke, like he was gargling wooden splinters and stones.
It didn’t come out like a question. It didn’t even feel like his tongue moved. Durgil heard the word in his inner ear, clear as day, as the dragon finished its sentence.
At first he wasn’t certain that the sound had come from his throat – it had been so long since he’d heard his own voice, it was unrecognisable – and, yet, there it was.
The sound itself was almost incoherent. But the meaning? The meaning was there.
Quiet. Dreadful. Disbelieving.
It was summary judgement, encapsulating all the world’s truths into a single choked noise. But Durgil would set it to stand like a figurehead before all mortal-kind, a flag to wave in the faces of heedless gods.
“Can it be? Do you speak? Ahhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa…”
The dracolich’s laughter was accompanied by wreaths of fumes pouring from between its savage teeth. It pawed more-furiously at its ball of corpses and pulverised armour, as if unable to contain itself.
Durgil shook his head, feeling every good thought, every wholesome thought, drip right out the bottom of his skull like warm water through a wicker basket.
“I had thought to ruin you, of course – but this!” The dragon reared up to its full height, and the brightness of its eyes was a terrible thing to behold. “You excel, Durgil, former Knight of Kultemeren. I am most pleased with your progress.”
“Why…“
“Why not?” The dragon took his outburst in its stride, smiling callously. “You came for me, a morsel with which I might entertain myself; but do not think I take my entertainment lightly –”
“Why did he bring us here? Why… why…”
Durgil’s eyes found the warped bodies the dragon had missed, the remnants of once-splendid armour, scattered about the cavern floor.
And he knew the power had left him.
He hadn’t accidentally broken his vows. He had rejected them, taken them up in his hands and twisted them till they broke.
That was all they deserved.
“Why…”
His armour was heavy upon his back, the straps restrictive on his joints. Dwimmerfoe and Glaimborn were bereft of light. He felt old, suddenly, the weight of his years coming down on his chest like an avalanche. The sigils of Kultemeren hurt his eyes to look upon.
His voice, so newly reclaimed, fell away to gasps. He cast off his gauntlets with flicks of his wrists and set about fumbling with the buckles.
“Kultemeren has always desired violence.”
Durgil looked back up sharply.
“You do not believe me!” the dracolich cried, mocking laughter erupting forth once more. “Oh, hahaha, you fool! How might I lie? Always it is the way with mortals; to ascribe those morals you proclaim to the highest of heavens, and those you deny to the basest planes. Yet your heart knows the truth, as your forsaking father, the Judge of All and Nothing, knows it. And does it not grieve him! O, he would change if he might! There is no higher morality than survival, and for you, yesssssss, even for you I was set to the challenge. Do you not realise the threat you posed to me? O, Durgil of my dreams… Even a single soul imbued with divine force might wreak terrible vengeance upon one such as I, linked by such astral strings as you are, fastened into a web of power you cannot even begin to comprehend.” The fluid eyes drifted with the blueworm waves. “One man, armed not with a sword and shield forged of steel but of faith… That is an awful thing. But forty of you, with your little sticks, metal spikes? No… No, they were but fodder for my war-machine. Too many swords – too little confidence. I say it again in defiance of your paltry epiphanies: you do not understand the pack. Had you been started upon this quest alone, it would bode more ill on my chances…
“Hahhh!“
His enemy’s voice had entered a musing, thoughtful phase, almost lulling Durgil into a state of tranquility; this new explosion of sound brought the dwarf back half-way to his senses, and his body was set reeling, shaking away there on the floor at the dragon’s feet.
“No. I was forced to break your spirits before permitting you to face me. I watched the fluctuations in your steadfastness. And in the end I needed do naught. You slew yourselves, I think. Had your former god wanted aught of you, he would not have let you die to the last man. Now, here, at the end of all things, I make you in Kultemeren’s stead: my Forsworn One. My antipaladin. And so shall I gloat in the face of Vaahn himself!”
Antipaladin…
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The moment the word fell from the forked tongue, Durgil’s hand fell away from the belts on his greaves. Ecstasy flooded him and he trembled, folding in on himself so that he didn’t topple in spasm.
“Yes! Feel it!” the dragon spat, playful scorn in its voice. “When the reward is stripped, the void left in its absence is beyond mere Wellspring. It is more than just my magic. It is older than spellcraft. Older than your world! Strip away the gloss, the varnish, the layers of old paint! Expose the raw soul, and let the acid bite at you! The tongue proclaiming its own truth is always that of a liar! There is more to what you were than what you are. Thus we reveal the shape hidden within. With chisel. With incision. With self-directed violence.”
All lights faded. The blueworm died. The curtain of shadow became a blanket, covering everything, blackness coalescing about the dwarf’s frame. In the heart of the darkness, it found him and filled him.
There was no more wholesome sensation than the electricity coursing up his spine. It was what it was to be loved. To be known and understood. Not for one’s face, one’s front, one’s fawning outward expression before the whole of society. No. For the inside. For the guzzling gizzards, the bile and wroth, greed and ego. For the self-expression and the truth –
Yes! he exulted, writhing. The truth of it! The truth of me!
Speaking aloud had awoken it. There was still within Durgil the purity of the boy-dwarf, wide-eyed in wonder as he first strode the streets of Mund. The idealism of the adolescent-dwarf, whose poems had failed to win the heart of Bronyaka, the most-beautiful dwarf-lass in all of Anvil Row…
Was that really what had started it all, what had set him on this path to self-righteous knighthood? To silence?
When he’d looked back on his life, he’d seen it through lenses of pure opaque romance. It was like one of the stories, a great warrior spurred on to realise his potential only by rejection. When she’d died in a darkmage attack in Rivertown, almost twenty years later, Durgil had been miles away, busy with his duties. He’d never seen her body, except in dreams, her face obscured by coils of blood-wet coppery hair.
Still, he’d always felt it gave him purpose. Like there was some meaning to things. A context for existence.
Now his earlier passivity made him want to retch.
That is no context! I silenced myself, for nothing! A man throwing his loaf off a bridge, pinch by pinch, telling passers-by he’s starving himself to save the world…
There was no other way to be, now. Sir Durgil the Duped! Kultemeren had betrayed him –
Kultemeren has betrayed me!
The thought itself was exactly the kind of paradox he’d have never been able to think before, but even conceiving it was ample demonstration of its truth.
“The god… of truth… betrayed me.”
The darkness passed. The soft ambience of the blueworm coating the ceiling returned slowly to the air.
“No. Oh, oh no, my child!” The dragon spoke softly, compassionately now. “He only sent you here to die. It is I whom he betrayed.”
“But –”
“And it is he whose edicts I now flaunt,” the dracolich continued, ignoring his confused outburst. “You shall live, Durgil. You shall live, and become a symbol of all that has been hidden from you your whole life. Did you honestly think Kultemeren omnipotent? Did you honestly believe his ability to control what mortals say of him implies some fundamental order to reality? Your understanding of truth is limited. Why do you think truth to be good? In your childlike fantasy you lose sight of the fact that almost all the truths told are evil: about evil, for evil purposes! This very truth! No, the truth is harsh, cruel, capricious. The truth is a tool of chaos, an agent of the Queen of Night! From whose womb did he spring? I shall say it to you now, a phrase the speaking of which would be beyond heresy, beyond unthinkable in your precious Mund. Kultemeren dwells in Nethernum. Twelve Hells… Indeed! Kultemeren dwells in Infernum! His role is not that of objectivity. It is subjectivity. It is the truth to be found in the small things, the most awful things. Did you not wonder at the minor infractions which evade the sight of his powerful servitors? Kultemeren knows that Mal Malas has been a good dragon this year, and will get all the Yearsend presents owed to him. Hahahahahahaha!”
It was too much – Durgil rolled to his knees and vomited.
Pure light fell, glowing water pouring from his throat onto the rock, splashing and pooling briefly before the oppressive darkness smothered it. Its residue burnt his gums as it seeped between his teeth, and he spat it out violently, watching gratefully as its traces evaporated.
“No, child. I believe the true Kultemeren behind the lies wished me weakened, for the battle to come. Your former lord and master is invested in my defeat, and even now he approaches, fury in his eyes. But I withheld all my strength, sacrificing only a tithe of my forces. It was worth it, to gain you.”
Durgil noticed that his armour now resembled that of Lord Ghelliot, when the chapter-master had first been changed into a deathknight, charred-looking, its decorations still slowly warping. His gauntlets, lying on the rock beside Glaimborn, had also been transformed; the carefully-etched runes were distorted on every outward- and inward-facing surface of the steel, melted into inchoate forms.
At least it felt lighter again, now.
The sword and shield themselves were dead, blackened. Their lights were extinguished, and no trace of nethernal fire sprang into existence to replace their celestial radiance. Durgil was no deathknight. He was not undead. Yet still he recognised the potential in his former armaments. There was no unholy aura to them that his eye could detect, but he could feel it.
He slid his hands into the gloves, then reached for…
For Shadeborn and Hammerfoe. He wasn’t in a position to heft them properly, but he retook possession of them all the same, dragging them, scraping them across the rock until they were right before him.
You –
“You never forsook me,” he whispered.
Their twin, separate darknesses only seemed to deepen in response.
Durgil looked up at the dragon – Mal Malas, he reminded himself, or one claiming to be him at least – and shuddered as the creature’s latest words washed over him again in recollection.
“He… He is coming – here?”
Kultemeren himself.
“Oh no, you misunderstand me! No avatar of the god. Merely his agent, one whose loyalty is split amongst many. A misbegotten and ill-trained brat, and, yet, a potent creature in his own way.”
For the first time, Durgil heard apprehension in the cavern-shaking voice. A twist of uncertainty.
Recognition.
“One of… one of your kin is coming?”
The dracolich snarled laughter. “Ahhhhhh! Something like that, yes. I had to draw him here, ensure he came back. And yet he moves more quickly now than visions foretold. I had scant hours in which to prepare for this, for his, ahhhh… welcome home party.”
Mal Malas craned his neck down suddenly. “Tell me, dwarf, that I might better repeat this feat: to what precisely did you succumb? Was it the awful dream, last night? Was it the old wound, from the first time you genuinely thought you would die? Was it watching them perish, one by one? The personal edge to my challenge, singling you out?”
Durgil stared, meeting the gigantic amethyst orbs without flinching.
“Pray, speak now, and hold not your unpractised tongue for fear of reproach! Rest assured, he cannot hear you now. Even the Judge’s hand falls short of the first corner of your path.”
In the silence that fell between them as the dragon closed his lips, there was only the soft, distant moaning of the air moving through cracks in the stone.
“Do not think me incapable of chastising you, antipaladin. I can rob the answer from your mind, or accomplish your ending in the space of a thought and take it from your ghost. You must realise, despite everything – you mean nothing to me. The proof of concept was my single desire.”
Durgil felt himself grin. He tightened his fingers about Shadeborn’s grip, Hammerfoe’s straps. “Just you try i-“
There was no trace of reaction, no flicker of foreclaw, no rolling of a tremendous eye. There was only the force, the immense, irresistible weight of a sorcerous construct he couldn’t see, driving through his shield and breastplate without marring them in the slightest – without encountering the least resistance as it plunged into his shoulder.
This was no mere spear of power, no meagre lance of energy: it was a thick wedge, like a mammoth’s tusk – like one of the dragon’s own horns. As Durgil was driven back and down by Mal Malas’s magic, skittering and crunching across the stone with blood welling up inside his newly-blighted cuirass, he loosed a yell.
It felt good, to scream. Properly scream.
After a few moments the sorcerous barb evaporated, with all the suddenness with which it had struck him, leaving him groaning and gurgling upon the rocks.
The nethernal spike was gone, sure, almost as though it had been all in his imagination – save for the very real wound it left in his upper chest. The cavity in his body represented a mortal injury, he knew – his arm dangled, and the amount of blood pushing its way out through the seams in his armour told him he didn’t have long left.
He had dared the representative of Death, and death was all he’d won.
Through the agony, he chuckled weakly. Somehow, he respected Malas now. The swiftness of his response, the cold, callous nature of the dracolich’s decision-making.
“I will let you live,” Malas said, affecting a magnanimous expulsion of his breath-weapon into the air.
Durgil moved his dying eyes to the dragon’s face with great effort.
“Wrongggg,” the dwarf gargled.
Malas reached up to his crown, ignoring him. “I shall simply strip your mind. I still have time. A shame, though. I had hoped to let you exercise your voice. You shall need it, where you’re headed, and even I cannot comprehend the nature of your power once it is fully expressed.”
“Wait.”
Durgil sat up, trying to glance down at his shoulder. He couldn’t see through the armour, of course, but something told him the wound was no longer life-threatening. He could move his fingers again. Vigour was returning rapidly, his vision clearing. Pain at the site of the injury diminished, then diminished again, dropping within seconds to the dull ache of a freshly-healed sore.
“What – did you do to me?”
The dragon lowered his claw, leaving the black jagged crown atop his misshapen horns. “Nothing, Durgil. Or, at least, nothing else. You are quite capable of surviving that blow, I trust… Consider it a warning shot.”
“I… I healed it?”
“You contain the reason for your own existence now.” Impatience entered the ancient voice. “I await my answer.”
Durgil coughed laughter. “You know I can lie now.”
The dragon shrugged his vast, tattered wings, accompanied by the immense hollow sound of a ship’s sails flapping. “You won’t.”
“No, I won’t.” Durgil’s voice was caustic despite the vicious smile slapped on his mouth beneath the beard. “What did it? What tipped me over? You really want to know.”
Malas inclined his head, and smoke seeped out between his scaly lips, wreathing about his jaw.
“It was –”
Lying was hard, when the truth was so bitter.
“What you did to them. It told me Kultemeren… It told me none of it was real. My whole life has been just like one of your illusions.”
“You think you were the first paladins to fail?”
“I’ve seen… seen knights die before.” The grin stayed on his face, and though his voice didn’t shake he felt the tears running hot from the corners of his eyes. “But never did I see them… see their souls taken.”
“You think me a god, to own such a thing? You thought I stole what can only be given? Ownership is such a strong term. Oh, you and all mortalkind, you have so much to learn. But one soul was lost here. Whether it has been found once more is a question I must pose to you, antipaladin.” The gloating returned: “Does your chest still hurt, little dwarf?”
Durgil shook his head, but not in an attempt to answer the question. Fury suddenly bubbled up within him.
“You made them deathknights!” he roared. “You took them and you – you – made Lord Ghelliot into –”
“Do you think Nethernum eternal? Have you, in your fear, in your mild, meagre quivering, given to it the character of the Everbefore, the Everafter? I tell you: I could not, cannot, make of them demons. The shadowland is but a step on the soul’s journey, a soothing sojourn before the true tests begin. A sojourn which I for one hope to prolong, to at least such an extent that I retain time upon these middle planes commensurate with twice my natural lifespan… had I retained such a tiresome thing. No. Your former brethren – they still face their choice. Once my control is removed they can do good or ill, like any man, any god. Their experiences in undeath shall shape them, even as did their experiences in life; for better or for worse, who shall say for sure?”
Durgil had trouble following the dragon’s logic, yet he spoke with the conviction of one well-acquainted with spiritual matters. Was Mal Malas suggesting they had as much chance at getting into Celestium as Infernum, despite the change he’d wrought in them?
“But they are predisposed to evil now! They were noble men, they were –”
“Do you truly believe that? They were children! When you attain adulthood you must set aside such precious insolence as they displayed in my home. Surely now you agree?”
Durgil had no words. He looked down at the blackened sword and shield in his hands.
Do I not still play the child? he wondered. Lying to him like this?
It wasn’t Lord Ghelliot’s transformation that’d done it to his mind, to his soul – not really. It was the moment the fiend’s teeth entered his knee, the moment the illusory pain entered his mind in spite of his undeceivable nature. That was when he’d known they were going to lose. Their enemy had subtly revealed the extent of his upper hand and it was then, feeling the remembered agony of the demonic jaw lodged in his knee-cap – that was when he’d really doubted. When he’d lost the war, before it’d even really begun.
But he wasn’t going to tell the dragon that, and Mal Malas seemed to take him at his word. He had a knack, it now seemed, for double-dealing.
“Yet I shall deign to educate you,” the dracolich continued, “as the wyrm teaches only the proven drake and not the wyrmling. For is that not the crux of it – the soul of the wyrmling? Tell me – can the dwarf-born babe not be predisposed to evil ere he is faced with moral choices, by exposure to evil? Can he not be a victim? The character is formed primarily by external forces. Hunger and thirst are powerful enemies, no less so than I. Do not be so quick to draw distinctions between mortal and eldritch. Are we not one and the same? Do we not bear the same souls? The spirit of the starveling idiot is condemned for the theft of a loaf, while that of the lazy aristocrat is upraised for a few nonchalant acts of charity. You dare call them noble. They were rich, pompous beyond compare! You, you who were one of them, ought know it better than most!”
“But… so…” Durgil struggled with the dragon’s meaning, his curiosity piqued. “There really is no difference? They are… undead, not ba-“
“Ah, my good dwarf. Undeath is simply another way of saying life. Why would you not retain your intelligence beyond your material existence? Do you truly hate yourself so? You would not be as them, I think, if I worked upon you now.”
“I don’t want to smell like a rotting fish.”
“Indeed?” The dragon sounded amused. “One’s scent, above one’s aspirations: a fine contradiction about which to twist one’s life. Very well – yet the offer shall remain open, so long as we both reside upon this plane. Should you turn out mortal after all, seek me if it suits you, and I will remake you in this image.” Malas’s talon reached up, gesturing to all the tons of rancid splendour hanging from his bones. “I will unspin the knot at the heart of you, bring you clarity.” He lowered the claw once more. “Only if it suits you, of course.”
The dracolich laid down his great head, rolling slightly and stretching into a position of repose. He closed his eyes, jelly-like lids sliding down to mute the amethyst fires.
“Now – how do I look?”
“Like you need taking back to the shop and repairing.”
Twelve Hells, it felt good to talk.
The dragon chuckled. Black mist rose from the creases of age-old nostrils.
“Good. Let him see me so. He will think me weak. It will not take him long to realise you have been my foe. Play along, if you will, and when I find my victory over him –”
“Don’t lie to me.”
The dwarf’s utterance was quiet, but he knew the dragon would hear, knew he was interrupting.
After a pause, Mal Malas adopted an offended tone, his eyes still closed.
“I have no need to lie to such as you. You are –”
“More lies.” The dwarf sat back on his haunches, feeling the familiar, comfortable bite of his armour upon his flesh through the padding, and smiled openly. “For all your words, all your years, all your magic – you don’t understand me, either. You don’t know what I am… what you’ve done.”
“I’ve done nothing,” the dragon insisted.
“Yet I can see through your lies! And you can’t see through mine!”
Durgil climbed to his feet, and Mal Malas raised his head a few feet from the rock to better regard the dwarf.
“I don’t know what your purpose is here, but I know you’re misleading me now! You don’t want to be victorious. You want to lose, and… and for me to tell your… your slayer that you…”
It made no sense, but there was no other way to interpret the experience. Mal Malas had said ‘when I find my victory over him’ and ‘I have no need to lie,’ and each time Durgil felt the stab of certitude, a new fact entering his brain at the speed of light:
The first time: He plans to lose.
The second: He believes he needs to lie to cover it up.
But there was none of the usual divine rage inside the dwarf. He’d been emptied. He kept his smile on.
“I’ll tell your killer everything,” he promised the dragon.
“No!” it hissed, twisting about to come back onto its four legs, suddenly surging closer to Durgil. “Kindling! The truth? The truth would imperil both you and I, and –”
It was too late. Sooner than Mal Malas had anticipated, his opponent entered the cavern.
“No conversation this time, beast.“
The newcomer’s voice echoed down from the blueworm ceilings, blatantly supernatural in its thunderous tones.
“No more messing around. Step away from the dwarf, and I’ll make it as painless as I can. By Kultemeren.“
The illusion barely took hold in time. Durgil saw right through it, and bore witness to Malas’s flight as the real dragon went right through the cavern wall, sliding through stone like a ghost.
Durgil’s smile broke into a grin. The fake dragon wheeled away from him, eyes raking the roof, searching for the person with this odd, foreign-tinged Sticktown accent.
A champion of Mund, Durgil thought to himself, an archmage, come to save me?
He chuckled some more.
Malas, you really did go too far, didn’t you?
The dwarf pointed at the wall, and cried: “He went that way!”