Sounds of combat reverberated throughout the underground vaults of Piper’s Hill. Marcus heard them as a veteran who never believed he’d have to hear them ever again did—with a crippling, knowing trepidation.
“Marcus Graham,” Jin’an said. “I thought you a man of greater ambition.”
He looked up at the Yokun with hate-filled eyes as her scaled hands traced his palm and clenched around his crackling fingers. He felt the energy of the Gloomraav swirl and pulse within him, ready to reach out and flay this woman if he so wished.
“You’ve got them all wrapped around your fingers, don’t you?”
The Yokun smiled, showing chipped fangs and a half-severed tongue.
“You are always believing in ulterior motives. But I tell you a simple truth: my fight is, and always has been, the fight of my Brothers and Sisters in binds.”
“Who serve you while you sit back here, ruling over them like a Queen.”
“You are more of a fool than I thought if you think me the Queen of these people.”
Pain wracked up Marcus’s entire arm. He watched his veins glow with the lambent green energy that he’d hurled at ratmen once under his command as he made his escape from Grindlefecht.
“You think you see me, Marcus Graham,” the Yokun Elder whispered with her legion of voices. “But it is I who have eyes through which you must look. You must see what it is that you truly fear. That which keeps you from action.”
Before his pained face, Marcus then felt a thrum of power surround the Yokun who held his rampaging hand within hers, even as her scales began to crumble away as she tried to restrain his strength. From out of her hands dripped dark purple blood patches that swam down Marcus’s arm and pooled on the floor.
And as he fought to keep his breathing under control, Marcus saw shapes appear out of those pools of blood—shapes that began to morph into creatures who now only remained in the depths of his memory.
“Face your fear, Marcus Graham,” Jin’an commanded. “See what it is that keeps you from being what you must be.”
The first blood-statue grew a pair of sharp eyes and hunched its back, and Marcus could almost smell the distinctive scent of ratman ichor seeping from the open wound in the creature’s stomach.
Gatskeek was staring down at him.
“You are thinking me the first of your sacrifices,” the old, venerable rat said. “But who was it who was laying down his life to get you back to Fleapit? Me. It is being my choice to believe in you.”
Marcus scowled at the Yokun out of the corner of his eyes. He had to admit, it was a convincing illusion.
“If you think to make me lay down and cry, you’ve clearly never met me.”
“Hardly,” the Yokun whispered, gripping his hand still tighter. “If you are so certain of yourself, look again at the blood at your feet.”
Marcus did so despite his better judgment, mainly because he felt the piercing eyes of the next blood-ghoul gazing into his soul and knew who it was without even needing to look.
“Ix-ix is not thinking Marcus Graham would sit by while those who need him die-die,” Ix said, his characteristic and confident smile all too real, even as it dripped with the purple blood of his summoner. “Ix is not even one-one of the ratmen, and yet he joins them because he believes in Marcus.”
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“And yet I destroyed you!” Marcus howled, temporarily forgetting the Yokun was even in the room. “And all your people…I won’t let it all happen again. I…I won’t…”
This time it was the third shadow who spoke to Marcus without any input from the Yokun Matriarch. The bloodied paw of the ghost tipped Marcus’s head up to look into its eyes—two fiery bulbs filled with devotion.
“You are being what you must be when you must be,” Deekius told him. “You are feeling the pull of this world even when you are in its belly with us. You are knowing that you can be changing this world for the better.”
“I got you all killed,” Marcus murmured into the ratman’s face. “You didn’t deserve—”
“We followed you,” all the ghostly visages said in unison. “We fought with your name as our battle cry. We died with your name on our lips. If you have pity, mourn those of the Underkingdom who betrayed you, Marcus Graham. And those who shall betray you further still.”
The bloodied forms of the ghostly triad began to spittle and spill away, coming apart as Marcus tried to reach for them.
“…Those who shall betray me further?” Marcus parroted. “What do you—”
“A great war is coming,” the ghosts howled as one—the Yokun adding her own voice to theirs now, until the whole room rang with the cries of the dead. “A war to end all wars. It will engulf the surface, it will engulf the underworld, it will spread until it engulfs the very stars themselves, and then it shall seek out your own world. Only the Summoned Ones can prevent this. Only they can bring true peace to Thea!”
The blood visages then finally dribbled away, and Marcus heard the bone-crunching scream of Jin’an as she grappled with his hand.
He could barely even see it now—there was nothing but a haze of wicked green energy that joined them, arcs of lightning spearing around it.
“Your companions were…good warriors,” the Yokun stammered. “Even now I can feel them in this room. I can hear them call out for you to rise…rise as you did in the depths of the earth…”
Marcus grimaced against the deluge of pain seeping down his forearm.
“I can…still the Gloomraav within you,” she snarled. “But only if you are…willing.”
Willing to fight, you mean.
“…Another war,” he murmured. “Another fight that’s not mine…”
The amber slits of the Yokun met his then, and they held each other’s gazes across the lambent spectacle of death that engulfed their respective arms.
“Will you not believe in the cause of the woman you love?” Jin’an whispered. “Will you truly leave without her, just because you are scared of making another mistake?”
You know I won’t, you sly snake, Marcus thought with a wry grin. You knew I wouldn’t the second you brought me here.
“No one else will die because of me,” Marcus answered, rising up and staring down at the Elder with fierce determination.
“People will die…anyway,” the Yokun replied. “But you could limit the cost. You…you could save so…so many…you could cure a disease eating at the heart of this realm! You could make sure that…your men…all your loyal soldiers…did not die…in vain. You…you could…”
He knew what she was going to say next without her even saying it. Still, when the words left her dried-up lips, he was shocked by just how much they cut to the core of his being:
“You could matter, Marcus Graham.”
He snarled down at her, thinking to send the flaring energies of his arm flying right at her neck then and there, ending the miserable life of this Doomsayer and simply running away with Mari back home, even if he had to drag her there.
…Back to a life of petty squabbles, dumb politics, and a culture that had already made it clear it hated his guts.
…Shit.
“If I do this,” he shouted down at her, “I’m gonna need some real power. Those people out there won’t listen to me just because I tell them I’m your special little ‘Chosen One.’”
There is something I can give you, the Yokun said, never once moving her lips. The voice that Marcus heard had come from within his own mind. It was stronger than even the highest-pitched battle cry he’d heard sound off in the deep. It was a voice that rang with authority.
As you are no doubt aware, Marcus Graham, those born with the Art may bestow the Art of magic to another. Such transference kills the spirit. It is done in Yokun culture only when an Elder Magus is set to depart from this world.
Marcus’s eyes went wide as he realized what she was saying. He felt the energies of the Yokun quelling his own, nullifying the power of Deekius, and then merging with it. Now, something else was creeping up his shuddering arm.
Power.
As the thundering of combat raged through the narrow tunnels of Piper’s Hill, the ailing Yokun then laughed as she took her final breath:
I have done what I was born to do, Jin’an of the House of Whispers told him. I have brought the Snake and the Rat together. I have done this thing…as only I could. Now, tell me, Marcus Graham: what will you do?