"If the truth shall kill them, let them die."
― Immanuel Kant
Chapter 1: Death in Phospiach
Quantity has a quality all its own.
That’s an old quote, one that I’ve never forgotten. Before all this, it’s safe to say that I had a romantic’s idea of fighting, the eternal fantasy of being an army of one. Mowing relentlessly through hordes of faceless enemies, accounting for them with precise sword-swipes, surgically placed bullets or lightning-fast blows that downed them like the scythe of Death Himself.
In those fantasies, they always died neatly, too. Artful sprays of blood, or dramatic, arm-flailing death-dives…Each one a marker of another victory, another opponent I never needed to deal with again.
Suffice to say, the reality was different. Far different.
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The first time I ever killed someone, he was helpless, bound. Even then, it took nearly a dozen stabs to put him out of his misery, and he wept and bled like a stuck pig the entire time. Words cannot express the stench, the foulness, the terror and (perhaps worse of all) the odd sense that I was making a mess of it.
The thing I remember the most was a deep and abiding shame. Like I’d turned up for a formal occasion under-dressed and under-prepared, and I was letting everyone down. I couldn’t even keep hold of the knife - When my hand slipped, I cut two fingers to the bone, and I was whimpering every bit as much as he was by the time I made an end.
All this, in front of his weeping wife and the wailing children, clinging to each other. Not wanting to look, but knowing they had to.
Marquis Éighir had loved every moment of it, of course. I remember that fey, beautiful face, those thin lips ever-so-slightly parted, savoring every moment like a fine wine. The way his pupils dilated, as if drugged or aroused.
It wasn’t the killing, you see. It was the low drama of the moment, knowing what he could make me do. That's the Gentry for you - To them, everything is entertainment. And the best kind of entertainment was watching what someone would do to save his own skin.
I would have fled, but the wolf-masked huntsmen stood silent witness, watching me shake from the adrenaline. Hands slick with my own blood, not really knowing what I was doing to begin with. Stabbing over and over again, both eyes shut, just wanting it to be over-
But we’ll get to that in time.
Believe me, we will.
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There are no sureties in fighting. When your life’s on the line, everything can and will go wrong.
Maybe you lose fingers.
Maybe a blade nicks an artery, and you bleed out in a matter of minutes.
Maybe you get a gut-wound or an infection, and you die slowly and painfully over a week or two.
And that’s when you’re fighting a single opponent. As their numbers go up, the odds against you increase exponentially. They only need to get lucky once, after all. After that, well, you can count yourself lucky if you make it out in one piece. Anything can happen when enough people are swinging blades and bludgeons, especially if they’re all trying to get you at once.
That’s what armor (and a good helm) is for, incidentally. Delaying the inevitable.
Thresholders live violent lives. Get in enough fights, and - at some point - the law of averages turns against you. Sometimes, even what appears to be an overwhelming advantage isn’t enough, and all you can do is to take your best shot and pray you get a chance to make a break for it.
Which is why I drew up short, when I saw what I was facing.
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Just over a score of Pa’quan’s faithful remained, outside the Intrinsic Gate. They were, without a doubt, the toughest and the luckiest: Somehow, they’d survived the worst fighting of their entire lives, years of carnage crammed into the span of a few hours.
Let me remind you, these were peasants. Had been peasants, I mean - I have no doubt that, between Alistair and Eulisia, they’d been forged into an army. Most were wounded, some seriously. I glimpsed rough poultices over chest wounds, the stumps of arms bound by tourniquets or seared shut, a woman with a red-spotted bandage over half her skull.
About half were Tillers and Strawmaidens, the orphaned priesthood of their god. The rest were a motley band of guerillas from a half-dozen villages, so far from everything they’d ever known that they couldn’t imagine a way back.
But they were all armed, and determined to see things through. Heavily armed, in some cases, with exotic and mismatched weapons salvaged from the horrors of the Spire and dead champions alike.
Gleaming flamespears, ritual tabars, gilded prayer-maces and the howlite saif blades favored by shuras of the Vushka…The flails, war-scythes and reaping-hooks wielded by the few remaining purists looked positively mundane, by comparison.
What I’m saying is, they made for a tough crowd. I could probably have fought my way through them - probably - but things are never sure when angry blades are approaching from all directions. I’m not at my best when dealing with groups: I’ve learnt how to fight on four worlds, but even after all that time, my fighting style is generously described as ‘thuggish’.
Generally, I prefer a single, weaker opponent I can safely brutalize. But don’t we all?
The problem, however, was the wicker man.
Now, language is a strange thing. They didn’t call it that, of course: I think the best approximation would be Sentinel-Who-Walks-Behind-the-Rows or Basket-that-bears-the-fruit-of-the-harvest.
The tradition of wicker men was an old one, one that went back long before Pa’quan, to a more atavistic form of worship - I’d never thought that Eulisia would bring back the old ways, but I suppose that she was desperate.
They all were.
The basket-bearer was a towering three-meter tall effigy of twisted reedwork, like a stylized soldier or warrior. It was a living totem, woven from dried reeds and tall grasses, held upright by a wooden frame. Limbs and eerily featureless head stuffed with straw, to add bulk and kindling.
The thing’s gut, however, had been left empty. That was for the fires of faith that burned, furnace-hot, within its form: A constant blaze, fueled by the offerings heaped into the vigilant’s hollow core. I’d never asked, and they’d never told me, but I knew enough that no magic came without price - It must have taken a lot to get something this large moving, to make it withstand everything that had been thrown at it.
I had a nasty feeling what the offerings, what the sacrifices, must have been.
From a distance, the wicker man looked fragile and gangling, but it strode with the sure tread of a titan, long, large arms ending in burning fists. Long streamers of prayer-papers, perpetually alight, trailed from its limbs in time to its lumbering motion, arms rising with a kind of ponderous unstoppability-
In a word: Terrifying.
It would have a controller, I knew. Some Fieldswarden or Sower, tasked with holding the straw doll that impelled the lurching horror into motion. It wasn’t enough to simply be a believer: You needed a spark of sorcery, or some innate divine gift, to order the giant wooden automaton around.
Deal with them, and you dealt with the wicker man...Well, for a certain value of the word, of course. Left to their own devices, the towering effigies had roughly even odds of grinding to a halt, or going on a rampage.
Frankly, given the choice, I would’ve much preferred to run away.
Fortunately, it was currently occupied.
Unfortunately, it was also the source of the screams.
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The approach to the Intrinsic Gate had been guarded. Less heavily than I’d expected, but guarded all the same.
The air stank of blood and smoke, of smashed-open bodies and everything they held. Dead men lay everywhere, tangled and torn apart.
The signs of battle were everywhere. Scraps of bloody cloth, buckled pieces of armor, ruined weapons…Given the bloodstains on the gleaming battlements, the defenders had held on long enough for one hell of a desperate last stand.
From their scowling silver masks and mail of vitruvian glass, my guess was that they were Shuja, blessed supplicants. According to the sages I’d consulted, they were a sect within the Vushka, veteran warriors lessened by crippling wounds or advanced age. Their reward for faithful service was to dwell, eternally, within the shadow of the Intrinsic Gate.
This close to the physical subject of their charge, the accumulated devotion sustained the Shuja, somehow. Lent strength to withered limbs and failing forms, soothed minds riven with trauma or the encroaching mists of age.
Theirs was a honored role, albeit a ceremonial one. They were expected to hold their post until death came to claim them, as much a part of the Platinum Spire as the mosaic-guardians and stony horrors were. At any time, there were about a dozen of them, standing eternal guard in stiff postures of ritual defense, marking only the passage of time until the end of their watch.
All things considered, they’d made a good accounting of themselves. Their executioner’s axes and fullblades had reaped a hungry toll of Pa’quan’s faithful, before the Shuja had been overcome in a desperate rush. Not that the outcome had ever been in doubt, not when they’d been up against a world-hopper and a putative demi-goddess...Or whatever Eulisia was, now.
Alistair must’ve led the charge from the front. His conscience wouldn’t have allowed for anything else, wouldn’t have let others do the dirty work for him. That was good: It meant he’d be weakened, exhausted, possibly even wounded from the brief, brutal fight that had raged before the serene opal-and-silver gate.
It probably didn’t count for much, not with that fancy sword and that amulet of his. Still, it was something. And, to be frank, I needed every advantage I could get.
Assuming I survived the next few minutes, of course.
Because the wicker man-
The wicker man was eating the fallen.
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Not all the Shuja were dead. Not yet, at any rate.
As I scaled the Holy-of-Holies, as I began to sprint across the knife-blade walkway, I saw the immense effigy take hold of a flailing figure - the way a glutton seizes a prey-bird, perhaps - shoving the broken-limbed form into the raging inferno located in the center of its chest.
There was a terrible buzzing, a sound like a thousand trapped hornets. Smoke belched from the reed golem’s back, burning paws already reaching out to snatch up another almost-dead morsel. But perhaps the worst thing about the monster was its eyes, or the burning holes that passed for its eyes.
There was something horrific in that unchanging, fiery gaze, the unmoving carved slits were fixed in a semblance of cold concentration. Like it would crush you, immolate you, rip you apart, without the slightest show of outward emotion.
It was hard to look away from that. The transition from life to death, where someone went from a person to kindling, to something to be devoured…It was mesmeric.
There, but for the grace of the Gods, go I, or so they say.
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The first heads swung towards me, before I’d made it more than a quarter of the way across the gleaming platinum plane. No surprise, really - I’d arrived at the tail-end of the fight, their blood still running hot, the din of battle still ringing in their ears, but it was never going to buy me more than a few seconds.
Good thing that was all I needed.
For in each hand, I gripped a spintriae.
My footsteps pounded on the tapered bridge below, a khoom-khoom-khoom that echoed my pounding heart. Even as the first shouts came up, I hurled the blood-warm token - a scoured and scarred silver coin, mirror-bright beneath the ugly runes scratched into the surface - into the churning grey skies.
“Korakka, devour this carrion!”
Something heard. Something answered.
Smoke-black sigils tumbled in the spintriae’s wake. High, hungry cries cracked the air, as a black tide of feathers, curved talons and cruel, flashing beaks boiled forth.
Crows. Dozens of them, thousands of them - all the crows in the world - came swarming down, a seething, lightless mass. Beaks open, claws reaching, wings spread, they swooped and dove as one, surging towards Pa’quan’s followers in a charcoal-black cloud, as inevitable and unstoppable as the fall of night.
I saw a Tiller cry out as he was engulfed. His scythe, marked with god-runes, sliced the air - Once, twice - flashing in the dark as he staggered backwards. Clammy-skinned bodies tumbled away, but the blood only fed the feeding frenzy of the rest.
He was a brawny man, hardened by years of toil, but there was no resisting this wind-driven fury: The sheer force of them drove him back, back, over the edge of the platform, and I heard his blind shouts turn to a high, despairing wail as he fell.
I kept my head down. Kept moving, kept running, even as the sonic sea of hungry caws split the air. Mangy feathers rained down, their eyes black oblongs of ravenous animal indifference. Jabbing, pecking, tearing as they mobbed the ragged survivors...
Their prey, now.
Carrion for the feast.
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Somehow, I’d made it halfway across.
Arms swinging as I ran, my lungs beginning to burn, I bulled forward. Sprinting flat-out now, blood pounding in my ears, fighting the urge to look to either side.
The bridge was wide enough for three men to cross abreast, but the drop that waited beyond that silver span-
There was no arguing with that. No amount of toughness, no amount of grit, could save you from a plunge like that.
What’s that they say? That it’s not the fall that kills you, but the landing? It wasn’t something I cared to find out for myself, not now.
Not ever.
My steel-toed boots felt impossibly heavy. They’d felt like an excellent investment, two worlds ago - You won’t believe how hard it is to find proper footwear, let alone footwear that can change the course of a fight.
I can’t count the number of times that a single stomp or a kick to the ribs proved decisive, as deadly as a knife up the sleeve or a slide-away rig. It’s always the one you don’t see, the one you haven’t prepared for, that gets you in the end.
It is the nature of things to break, to fall apart, to be expended. All you can do is to accept that nothing lasts forever, and to use what you have while you can.
People, too.
In a fit of profligacy, I’d had them enchanted at the Soul Market, had glyphs stitched into the worn leather for resilience and comfort. It’d seemed like a good idea, at the time: Now, my every stride felt as clumsy as a giant’s, the ground underfoot as slick as frosted glass.
Don’t look down-
Don’t look-
Don’t-
The swirling ball of wings and talons - a murder to end all murders - swirled around the final, spiral vaunt of the Exigence. The black, churning swarm had grounded itself like a dust-devil, scouring the platinum-capped terrace in a dense storm of bodies. Dimly, through the billowing, tearing flock, I could see men and women flailing, fighting, falling…
Maybe it would be enough, after all. I just needed Korakka, Old Eye and Talon, the Scavenger, to favor me just a little longer. If I could just get close, just get my hands on them, no force on this world or any other could stop me from getting through that gate.
Tempting fate as always, Morgan. Tempting fate.
“Kill him!”
A raw, ragged scream, over the rush of black wings. I glimpsed a tottering figure - half-flayed, skin peeled back from glistening red flesh in wet ribbons, one eye put out - pointing at me, lank hair streaming as she clutched a tattered bundle to her blood-soaked chest.
She was convulsed with agony, half-crumpled with pain, but the wounded Fieldswarden still had enough strength to give a final, spiteful order:
“Kill the unbeliever!”
Shit, I thought, and put on one last burst of speed-
The wicker man got there first.
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The ever-burning effigy strode through the blizzard of crows, creaking as it bore down on me. It was impervious to the beaks and talons that tore at it, the many-eyed storm of cruel knives that could shred a man to nothing.
In a way, it made a terrible kind of sense: The hollow giant was, after all, a scarecrow writ large. Smoke trailed from its woven crown, still-living sacrifices writhing within the hungry furnace of its core - It covered the distance to the bridge in long, steady strides, huge paws flexing as it reached for me.
If it seized me, I’d be kindling for the blaze. If it struck, a single lashing blow would sweep me from the silver span, sending me plunging to my doom. Already, I could feel the heat that radiated from it, felt something knot in my gut as it barreled towards me.
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Focus.
It lunged.
A great arm swung in, left to right.
Focus.
I dove towards it. Towards the wall of burning wood. I dove towards death.
But I dove low.
I felt my hair crisp, as the great arm lashed out. Saw the air around it ripple, as it was whipped and heated. Flames licked across the narrow space, filling my vision, as the great fist came hurtling towards me.
And then I was under the arc of the swing, the blow whistling overhead with a plosive whoof of displaced air. I went skidding beneath the effigy’s outstretched arm, my dive carrying me through its shadow.
And as I dove, my fist clenched down on the sharp bone of the token I held, till the edges scraped dully against the black stone. It was an ugly thing, a crude scrimshaw almost-star…But then again, the cannibal followers of the Osseous King cared little for pretension.
Only power.
For a moment - Just a moment - I was in line with the wicker man’s tree-trunk legs, beneath the open cage of its core.
The tiny ivory carving left my hand, as light as a child’s toy. It seemed so small, so fragile as it spun through the air. But like a trick of perspective, it grew as it hurtled forward, gaining a momentum unlike nothing natural.
Grew grotesquely-
When it struck, it was a whirring blade of twisted bone, chopping through the air with the lethal velocity of a propeller. Nothing about that knurled, ridged shape - at once humerus, ulna, radius, metacarpals, phalanges, and all the rest - seemed even remotely aerodynamic or even mobile, but it flew as if guided by the hand of God himself.
Which God, I wouldn’t like to say.
The golem’s knee exploded when the great anchor of bone smashed into - through - it, with the brutal crunch of impact.
A flurry of splinters, a cloud of sawdust kicked into the air-
I heard the brutal snap of a limb being shorn in two, the living effigy listing violently to the side. Suddenly clumsy, it flailed, arms lashing the air in a silent parody of human distress - Fighting to stay upright, fighting the alien, lurching absence where a leg had been…
But the wicker man’s bramblewood frame had already been fatally undermined, and there was no coming back from this. I heard the snap of its latticed frame giving way, breaking, pulling apart-
With one leg reduced to flinders, the hideous thing’s own weight completed the work I’d started. All at once, it overbalanced, cords snapping taut in protest, as - with a final, creaking groan - it finally succumbed to gravity’s pull.
Burning fingers grasped at the empty air, the towering figure of woven reeds and branches tipping - further, further - over the yawning abyss. And then, with a thunderous crash, it fell, plummeting downward in a flurry of flames and splintered wood.
There was an eerie grace to its descent, its form twisting and turning in the wind like a macabre dancer. The only sound it made was a symphony of rustling and creaking, the dry strands of wicker protesting against the forces that pulled it downward.
I heard it strike an outcropping, to the accompaniment of snapping bones. Heard it bounce, flung wide by the impact - But I never heard the impact. Still, the echoes of its plunge reverberated from the Platinum Spire’s walls for long, damned moments after, like a poignant farewell.
I ground to a scraping, squealing stop. Senses still reeling, teeth clenched so tightly I feared they would snap. All I really wanted to do was to lie there, sprawled on the cold metal, for the next few hours…But I got my hands beneath me, heaving myself - shakily - to my feet.
Adrenaline had me in its grip. Acid washed the back of my throat, my pulse pounding so hard it was all I could hear. Dimly, I sensed something had changed: The screams coming from within the damnation swarm of crows had stopped, lost in a swirling vortex of jet-black feathers and piercing beaks.
The deafening cacophony of their caws reverberated through my skull as I staggered upright, the air thick, choking with the metallic tang of blood, the charred stench of burning.
I couldn’t imagine how it must have felt, to be swept up in that frenzy. To feel beaks tearing at your flesh, ripping away skin and muscle alike. Knowing that you were being devoured, an inch at a time, even as you fought for your life.
Surely, surely, they were all dead no-
The black cloud burst apart, the mass of it exploding away in every direction at once. It spilled out across the terrace, dissipating, disintegrating - No longer a single, murderous entity, but thousands of individual crows, cawing confusedly as they flapped away.
What?
The murder-to-end-all-murders left thousands of dead or dying birds in its wake, their fallen forms carpeting the gleaming platinum plane like autumn leaves.
And more than a dozen of Pa’quan’s faithful, still standing.
Their clothes were ripped and torn, their flesh covered in scratches and cuts - Gaping wounds weeping crimson rivers of pain - but they were still alive, still defiant.
Still entirely capable of killing me.
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Fights are a funny thing. They have a pitch, a rhythm, a life of their own. An ebb and flow, almost, like the rush of blood in your veins. Sometimes, time slows.
You observe.
The sutras of Vairocana call this the Law of the Flesh. The teachings say that the beginnings of wisdom lie in blood and bone, in the substrata of your own body, on a level the conscious mind can never hope to reach.
These moments are to be treasured, for the epiphanies they hold. Profound insights can come in the heat of combat, in the spaces between each breath.
When life meets death, so the warrior-prophets of the Frenzied preach, all is made clear.
I believe that, as much as I believe in anything. The unexamined life, as the saying goes, is not worth living.
As I contemplated that macabre tableau - the wounded and the bloodied, struggling to stand - I saw the determination that had brought them this far. How their love for Pa’quan, for his departed shade, had carried them all the way from their humble villages to this most sacred of places.
How, even at death’s very own door, they endured. Even through the loss of those who stood beside them, through the pain of their own torn and bleeding limbs. It was something more than faith, more than the currency in which gods petty and greater trafficked, that let them brave the Platinum Spire and all the horrors it held.
There was something achingly, profoundly human about that.
I took them all in, at a glance. Saw them, knew them: Young and old, male and female, weather-beaten and fresh-faced. All with the same hard eyes, made old by all they’d seen and done.
Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, they deserved to win.
But what does deserve have to do with it?
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One of the women - a rail-thin village elder, leaning on her scythe like a crutch - was shouting to the others. Blood was pouring from her scalp, one hand clamped to the side of her throat, but she was shouting all the same.
Not anything I understood, but the meaning came through even without words: She was trying to rally the others, to get them up and at me, to put fire back in their bellies and steel in their spines.
To drive them all forward, in that one last effort.
We’re so close, she was saying. Just a little more.
Just a little more, and we’re done.
Not everyone heard. A grey-faced Tiller had sunk to his knees, arms wet with blood. He’d gashed them with his own sickle, fuel for the desperate invocation that had turned the crows away. It’d cost him, badly, and two of the faithful were tending him - One to prop him up, another to bind his shaking limbs with strips of linen.
But that left a full decade of them, still ready to fight. The oldest hung back, wary. At the crone’s call, a number of young men shuffled ahead, arrayed in a rough battle-line with blades and scavenged spears. Those who had shields hunched behind them, like they were the very promise of salvation itself.
They made for a motley lot, teeth gritted too tight, sharp edges forward as each step crunched on the small, feathery bodies of dead crows, some already dissolving to protoplasmic mush. They were balanced, you see, right on the knife edge between fear and bravery.
After all, they’d seen what I’d done, and knew what they had to do.
Their best bet was to advance, steady and slow, a single united shieldwall. Keep me at bay with spears and battle-scythes, until I could be driven over the edge and down the waiting, ever-hungry drop.
It would have to be a relentless, unified effort. If the line broke, if it faltered, it would all come apart.
The tragedy of it was that I didn’t want to fight them, not really. They were in my way, and that was all. I could have waded into them, hacking and slashing, clearing a path - But I was wary of their salvaged weapons, some still charged with divine power, fuming with sick light.
I had a very clear and unsentimental idea of what could - would - happen to a man who tried to charge a line and failed. I’d seen it happen, seen five or six swords punching into the unfortunate repeatedly, his body jerking and twitching beneath the rapid-fire stabs, swift as a back-alley shanking.
It was a bad way to die. One of the very worst.
Unless-
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At this point, you may be wondering: You know I can shrug off gunfire. Sheathed in my shirt of gleaming scales, what did I have to fear from swords and spears?
The problem was, toughness is a matter of degrees. You think you’re invincible, right up to the moment you’re categorically, demonstrably not. Like all things in life, that realization usually comes as a sudden and deeply unpleasant surprise.
This is especially true when magic, that perpetually-unknown quantity, is involved. Phospiach was lousy with it, in ways both small and large, particularly when it came to weapons. Gods and spirits great and small loved imbuing the manifold panoply of war with some sliver of their power, investing their might in relics that harmed rather than healed.
Some say that this is because violence is a way of life, a reflection of some fundamental, cosmic truth. Others say that the Gods hunger for blood and souls, and they provide us mortals with the means to feed their eternal appetite for carnage.
Personally, I believe the real reason is pettier. After all, when mortals are hurt or desperate or suffering, they have a tendency to pray. They pray for succor, for deliverance, or just for an end to their pain.
Most of all, they pray for something that can never be granted: Make this not have happened.
As with all worship, their faith feeds the Gods. The Gods, in turn, work their miracles and put their sacred treasures in the hands of those best placed to use them.
And sp life's tragedy repeats unending.
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I had options. I had a handful of spintriae left, and there was always Oneira’s gun. Other things, too - the tattoos and the disruption blasts. But they all cost, and there would be a time when they were needed.
Instead, I put my hands up. Open and empty, palms extended with a smile. As if saying that I’d tried my best, and they’d got me.
That all was fair in love and war. That I’d shot my shot and all the other old chestnuts.
I sensed their confusion, then. Glimpsed the sideways flicker of their eyes, the surprise and the relief. For the waiting had been unbearable, and the gesture of surrender was all the proof they needed that I would die like a lamb going under the knife.
None had wanted to be first, but now all they needed to do was to get just close enough for those spears to run me through. To hold me in place while the swords did their work…
And in that deep, silent place within me, I thought: Now.
I felt Tauruskhan’s power swell within me, His breath filling my lungs-
At the last moment, I remembered to cover my ears.
When the roar came, when it boiled out of me, there was nothing human in it. It was too vast, too primal, to be called speech. It was the bellow of every bull that had perished in the hecatomb, hideously amplified: The death-cry of a god-auroch in full blood-rage.
I saw faces contort in agony. At least two youths fell down, clutching - too late - at their bleeding ears. The line buckled as they faltered, and with the echoes of that vast, horrid sound ringing in my ears, I charged.
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Borrowed strength drove me forward. It hurled me across the narrow distance in a blurring shoulder-rush, power churning around my limbs in a heat-haze shimmer.
I could feel the vapor boiling from my open mouth, a red mist gathering at the edges of my vision as the shield-wall loomed before me-
I struck, and felt the impact shudder through me. It was like a missile fired into a crowd, the impact hurling men into the air, on either side. Metal screeched, the line bending backwards, and then I was pushing into the opening gap.
My hand snapped out, grabbed the top of a buckled shield, yanked it down. For an instant, I saw the pale, scared face behind it, staring up at me in utter terror-
My gauntlet pistoned forward, and obliterated it in a spray of red pulp. Headless, the body crumpled, grip going slack. A scream of terror and despair rang in my ears, but I was still moving, still striking, giving them no chance to recover.
My boot cracked into a knee. I felt bone snap beneath the kick, heard the blank chuff of the sharp exhalation that comes before the pain begins. Another punch, another head snapping back.
A sword slashed at me, but I wrenched the shield in the way and it careened from the edge with a grating squeal.
Focus-
There were more of them, but I was right in their midst, now. I saw a man crawling away, two more dragging a corpse by the arms, another sobbing as he clutched at his missing jaw-
And one more, the bravest. A wild-eyed youth, who let out a ragged, exhausted war-cry - because he knew it was just him - and charged anyway. Determined to be brave, his eyes narrowed to slits, face slathered in ocher paint. He clutched his heavy flamespear like it was worth more than his entire life, putting all the strength of his broad back and arms into a single lunging thrust-
And as he did, the leaf-shaped head of the thundering polearm flared blue-hot, like an arc-welder’s torch.
Hot enough to shear through iron and stone alike, I knew.
Hot enough to carve through me.
It was a good thrust. Fast, lethal and aimed right at center mass. He’d have skewered me, given the chance...But I was fast, too. I was no Mercurian, but activation had accelerated me, all the same: Not just muscle power and bone density, but speed and senses too.
To me, his lunge seemed telegraphed, over-emphatic. As if all the world was a stage, and he wanted to look good more than he actually wanted to hurt me.
I twisted aside, just ahead of the searing arc, then drove at him. Before he could readdress, before he could swing the barbed and wicked spear back in line, I was right in his face, a hand on the spear’s haft.
To his credit, he let go. Fumbled for the dagger on his belt, mouth working like he was trying to say something-
I caught him by the throat, and hurled him from the ringed platform.
It was abrupt, awful. I saw his eyes bulge with astonishment as his feet left the ground, arms windmilling for balance. He still had that half-brave, half-startled look on his face as he pitched over the edge, too shocked to scream.
Like he couldn’t believe it was over for him, now and forever. That his life had changed, utterly and for the last time. I caught a glimpse of it, that final and profound revelation dawning on his sun-burnt features-
Torn garments flapping, he fell away like a stone down the open drop.
Gone, just like that.
You never think it’s going to be you. Not until it’s your turn.
“No-”
A boy on the left cried out - a desolate wail of absolute, soul-blighting horror - and I knew I’d just killed his brother. Face all scrunched up in a convulsion of grief, he lurched forward, ready to kill or die, the zirconite blade of his stolen scimitar rising to hack down into me-
The sound rang in my ears, as I rotated the unfamiliar weapon in my hands. The blue-hot point had cooled to a sullen red, and there was no time to find the trick of it.
Instead, I thrust.
The spear flickered out, faster than a snake’s tongue, the shaft sliding through my grip.
It plunged in through the boy’s right cheek, and the tip came out of the back of his head with the sickly hiss of quenching metal. He crumpled without a word, his body slumping with the profound surrender of a child going to sleep, and he was off to join his brother long before his knees hit the ground.
The unbloodied scimitar slipped from his unclenching hand with a hollow clang, as I jerked the flamespear free in a puff of pink steam. Metal grated on bone, the stench defying words as I swept the polearm in a clumsy half-arc, an arterial spray of gore lashing the gleaming floor like a whip.
That broke the spell, I think. All of a sudden, they were scrambling back, one and all. All coordination gone, confounded by the immediacy of death.
For it was one thing to die down there, in the nightmare halls of the Platinum Spire. It was another thing entirely to die here, beneath the storm-wracked grey sky, with freedom just close enough to touch.
I knew that feeling, too.
One man was limping away, clutching at his mangled shoulder as he dragged his bad leg behind him. My right arm drew back, the left extended before me, till the heavy spear hung horizontal in my hand-
In the span between one breath and the next, I let fly.
The spear flew. Not straight and true, like an arrow, but with extreme force.
It struck, with the choookkkk of a skewer being driven into meat, punching into his back. The blade erupted from the man’s chest, the dully-gleaming metal black with blood. I saw him arch, one hand reaching, clawing, trying to understand what had just happened to him-
He staggered two more steps, then fell with an odd, gagging noise. Like he was choking, or there was something in his throat that he had to get out. Gore drizzled from his open mouth, fingers scraping against the platinum ground as the air sighed out of him.
Somewhere in the welter of blood and horror, I fought to catch my breath. Shreds of flesh clung to my spined knuckles, gore drizzling down my chest, a foul copper taste in my mouth. I knew I needed to get after them, to finish this, but I just needed a moment-
The first sling-bullet struck me dead-on, and erupted in a mad tangle of vines.
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As I’ve said, Phospiach was lousy with magic. Some of it was sealed forever within artifacts of different make, but most came from the miracles of the Gods. The living Gods, mind you - each time a theurge invokes a deity, he calls upon their might anew.
It doesn’t belong to the invoker, not really, no more than a river belongs to a stream. He’s a channel for the divine, the instrument through which they make their power manifest.
But Pa’quan was dead. While the last embers of His powers still smouldered within His faithful, it was a precious resource, one to be spent sparingly if at all - For once it was gone, it was never coming back. All their fervor, all their devotion, went to His inheritor, and it was all she could do to keep the dying flame burning a little longer.
Eulisia had always been special. But that special?
No. No-one was.
I knew it’d taken a lot for them to get here. Fighting their way through the Platinum Spire, perverting the spell that separated each would-be champion from another…That took power, and lots of it. Slaying the Shuja, forcing open the Intrinsic Gate, had taken even more.
I’d been counting on it, actually. That they were nearly out of gas in the tank - Otherwise, who knew what they might unleash upon me?
Apparently, they’d held something back.
The sling-bullet was made of molded clay, the kind used to hunt birds and small game. But unlike those, this one was hollow. Hollow, and filled with seeds.
Having been a god of the harvest, Pa’quan had command over the plants of the soil and the beasts of the field. Through prayer and ritual, His priests could make a seed sprout, grow and attain unnatural size. All in a matter of seconds, though the cost of the boon was great.
Such a seed would grow with its usual strength, a strength easy to ignore when it was patiently pushing up a boulder, an eighth of an inch a year, or cracking a stone cliff over the course of centuries.
But there was an earth-breaking power in every seed. And these had been enchanted further, reworked to flourish briefly, wildly and without restraint.
So when the first bullet shattered against me, scattering its payload, I had all of a moment to think - What? - before thick green creepers surged to life.
They burst forth, blind and wriggling and questing for dirt. Instead, they found me, lashing at me, fighting to dig into my flesh, to cling fast and to bind. I dug armored fingers into their green flesh, ripping chunks free, but they grew with frantic life, coiling around my limbs, grasping, choking…
Fuck, I had time to think, hopelessly snared. It was a thicket, and I was right in its grasp, swelling faster than I could rip it away. With a snarl, with a surge of effort, I wrenched my legs free, managed a single, staggering step forward-
Then the second bullet struck me. Thorn-vines, this time - Openly carnivorous, their bright fruit lured small animals into their clutches, before their lashing creepers grabbed and crushed them, spines drinking their blood. Animated by Pa’quan’s magic, they grasped at me in a spiny tangle, tightening around my arms like a garland of barbed wire.
I could feel the jagged spines scraping my skin, trying to gouge into me, to drain me from within. I let out a wordless roar, swearing as I struggled, doing my level best to stop the vines from closing over my head. I still needed to breathe, and I had a nasty idea of what would happen if that patient strength seized my throat, and squeezed.
Tauruskhan wouldn’t help me again, not so soon. Despite the number of souls I’d just sent to Vairocana, his blessing wouldn’t be much help, not here, not now…
“Now!” someone shrilled, and I looked up to see the woman from before, the one who’d tried to rally the others. She was hobbling forward now, her face twisted in pain - But she wasn’t the one I had to worry about.
An auburn-haired Strawmaiden had snatched up a ritual fuscina, holding it like a pitchfork. Grey robes smeared with blood, she took a stumbling step towards me, raising the weapon high. I could see the frantic calculation in her eyes, as my muscles bunched, as I tore my left arm free in a spray of sap - Could she get to me in time? Where to strike?
What would happen if she failed?
“Don’t-” a raw, exhausted voice rasped out. “Esmi, don’t - Get away from him, girl…!”
There was the gun, but there was also one more thing. One more thing I really didn’t want to have to use. I reached deep within myself, as my gaze locked with hers. Finding the trigger point, the beginnings of a migraine clawing at my temples.
The head. She would go for the head.
Another step, and my eyes flashed blue. A crackle like static, like ozone, spiderwebs of lightning playing across my field of vision as the disruption charge built.
A flicker of hesitation-
“Da, he’s-” she began, her arms drawing back, ready to drive the bladed trident forward.
A thunderclap split the air, and a winged man fell from the sky.
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He came out of the storm, as bright as a shard of the sun itself. Gold were his gauntlets, and gold his shimmering greaves, his helm fashioned in the image of a great bird-of-prey, visor hooked like the beak of a falcon.
Even at a glance, it was clear how baroque, how ornate, the surface of his gilded armor was. Every inch of it swarmed with glyphs, with sacred script, with heraldry and symbols of all kinds. Signifiers of the pacts he’d struck, of the Gods who’d chosen to favor him.
But it was the wings that stole your gaze. They were full, huge, black as the void between stars - Beating as living things, an extension of his broad back. Except you could see that they weren’t part of him: They were ethereal, with bones of burnished brass, lit from within by a cold silver radiance.
They were sharp, though. Sharp as nanocarbon swords.
He came down right in the midst of Pa’quan’s faithful, stave-spear spinning in his hands, and carved them apart. Most never even knew what hit them - I saw blood, black and arterial, puff into the air as two Tillers were shredded by that first impact, too startled to even raise their weapons.
Those around them cried out in dismay, whirling to take on the demon. But he was already among them, his weapon cutting around him in great sweeps. It was a vicious combination of spear and mace, one stabbing and slashing, the other breaking, shattering.
The few shields that remained couldn’t stop or even slow him. His wings sheared through brass and iron like a hot knife through butter, his spear lancing with pinpoint precision into hearts and eyes as the mace swept round to deal the coup de grace.
I heard the plosive, splitting bang as a man took the maul right between the eyes. His smoking corpse hurtled back as if fired from a cannon, limbs still jerking and twitching with electric discharge as he hit the ground.
Worse than that, I think, was the golden man’s complete invulnerability. The tongues of swords cracked as they rebounded off him, the hafts of spears snapping. He didn’t feel them, not in the slightest: They didn’t even slow him down. He swept through them at that same brisk pace, doling out death in exacting magnitude, even as the few remaining fighters scrambled away from him in sheer panicked flight.
It didn’t save them. Nothing could.
“Look upon me, demon!”
It was the elder from before, her hair wild like a prophet of doom’s. There was something implacable about her, as she brought the curved blade of her scythe to her own throat. Hatred shook her rusty voice, etched deep in every syllable.
“Let this be the last thing you hear: Pa’quan prevails!”
She slashed, and her blood spurted. Even as she fell back, clutching at her severed throat, a buzzing darkness deeper than midnight spewed forth from her open mouth. It was a haze of flies, insects and disease, a charnel wind sweeping it towards the golden figure faster than any man could ever hope to run. It engulfed him with the droning of flies’ wings, a vile miasma of plague meant to blight him, to poison him, to strip the flesh from his very bones.
Black magic, fueled by her death-curse. I hadn’t expected that.
I hadn’t even known they could do that.
A golden gleam from within the cloud-
The winged marauder swept out from the cloud of death, rune-etched collar glowing as if fresh from the forge, and cut her cleanly in two. Already rotted from within, the crone’s body split like sailcloth, and neither half made a sound as they fell away from each other.
The last Strawmaiden’s stricken cry - a low, whispered denial - hissed from her lips, the trident in her hands nearly forgotten. Mesmerized by that glorious, awful descent, she’d watched, open-mouthed, as her kin had been butchered. As almost-victory became utter, gory defeat.
The elder’s death had broken the spell. I saw her expression change, gone bleak, gone hollow, as her father’s ruined corpse hit the ground. Saw the cold fury that drew the lines of her face taut.
She had to know that the life remaining to her was measured in seconds. That death was here, golden and relentless.
But she would slay at least one demon, first.
The fuscina’s bladed tines rammed forward, but she was already too late.
The not-quite-fire, not-quite lightning of the disruption blast speared from my blue-burning eyes, and she ruptured like an overripe fruit.
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I felt the spell unravel before I saw it. The grasping vines, the piercing thorns...All at once, they went slack, their brief life exhausted, withering even as I pulled free.
The glare of my eyes died away, but I could feel hot tears running down my cheeks, pain furrowing my mind.
There’s nothing natural about my strength. The process of creating an enhanced human is very much a thing of two parts: Physical enhancement, derived from the initial activation, and the physics-warping function of the distortion effect.
I was (and remain) oblivious of the esoteric science behind the distortion effect, other than a vague understanding that it has something to do with intrinsic fields. The passive application preserved the integrity of my body, gave me the trappings of durability without making soft human organs inoperable. It let me lift and swing a sword larger than I was, without snapping my tendons or wrenching my limbs out of joint.
But I could project it, too, in a merciless, active form that struck with mutilating force. Or to put it simply - Kill things by looking at them.
There was a cost, though. There was always a cost.
I could feel blood pattering serenely down my chin as I fought the sudden dizziness, the abrupt sway to my world. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d used it, today. The rule was two hours of rest to every hour of operation, and I'd been running hot for way longer than that.
Too long.
It felt like vomit was pressing against the back of my eyes. Like my head was about to explode from overload. I'd seen it happen before, too: They'd shown us videos back on Unity, detailing all the ways things could go wrong. Burst blood vessels, internal bleeding, intracranial hemorrhage...Bad ways to die, all of them.
I swayed to my feet, all the same. Fought down the nausea, the sudden, spreading wave of numb fatigue. I'd come this far, and the only way out was through. Some part of me whispered that I didn't have much more to give, but I ignored it.
I'd go all the way.
Wherever that was.
I'd go there.
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The golden man waited without impatience, without haste. Like he had all the time in the world.
I could feel his gaze on me, as I struggled to find my footing. Canting his head in a way accentuated by the avian nature of his helm, the eyes set with diamonds as black as coal. The magnificence of his armor, all sun-discs and laurels of sheet gold, made me feel grubby, distinctly shabby, like a pauper playing dress-up.
“-And so we meet again at last, my friend.”
The voice was warm, urbane. The slightest trace of an accent, a frisson of culture. Friendly, without being solicitous.
“Here, at the end of all things. Just as it was meant to be.”
I looked up, across the field of the dead, and met his eyes.
At some silent command, the segments of his falcon helm parted like the petals of a flower, withdrawing into his gorget. His head, revealed, was noble: Copper-skinned, dismayingly handsome, with high cheekbones and eyes of deepwater blue. With his blonde hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, the face beneath was familiar, instantly recognizable.
For almost an entire year, it’d been depicted in paintings, tapestries and frescos at every corner of the now-burning city below.
Jeru Sinai. Chosen of the Raven Queen and Her pale sister, Moon Tempest. Champion of Adrijanopolj, bearer of the Helleron.
Warlord of six worlds.
Thresholder.
TO BE CONTINUED