by Nick Horth
Vermyre twisted his shoulder and hurled Callis free. The throw sent him tumbling painfully across the floor, but he turned the painful impact into an awkward roll and came up firing from the hip, discharging both barrels of his duardin piece. The bullets struck a wall of invisible force, and erupted into bursts of blinding colour.
‘It’s very touching, this,’ said Vermyre. ‘The protégé, defending his master. What do you suppose your chances are, in this instance?’
‘Better than yours,’ Callis replied, seeing a flicker of movement behind the sorcerer.
Shev pressed her weapon against Vermyre’s back and fired. Blood splattered across the floor, and Vermyre staggered, growling in pain.
Miss Arclis, came Occlesius’ voice.
The Realms-Walker’s voice was strained and weak inside her head.
His will is so strong. I can feel it pressing down upon me, even now. There is something unutterably powerful growing inside his flesh. The creature was right. We must finish him, for the good of all.
‘Oh, Shevanya,’ Vermyre hissed, standing upright with a grimace. ‘I had no intention of killing you along with these fools. But I see now that you cannot be trusted.’
He moved like flowing water, so fast she barely had time to flinch before his punch struck her in the stomach, sending her skidding across the floor, groaning in agony.
‘And so,’ Vermyre continued. ‘I am disinclined to offer you that luxury. You should have chosen my side, Shevanya.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she growled, wiping blood from her mouth and clambering to her feet.
If she was to die here, she would do so spitting in this monster’s face.
He was closing on her. She could smell the foul, perfumed reek of him, and she wondered how she had ever been able to stand it. His eyes were bloodshot, crazed. They stared straight through her.
This is it, Shevanya, said Occlesius the Realms-Walker, and though his voice was weak there was a calm acceptance to it. I would like to thank you for this last journey. It has been most delightful to spend time in your company, and I wish you nothing but the best of fortune in the years to come.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, feeling numb and helpless, and hating herself for it. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.’
Nonsense, my dear. Nothing to be done about it. If nothing else, this is surely a fitting end for a life as rich and – dare I say it? – glorious as mine. Goodbye, Miss Arclis.
Something lifted Shev and sent her sliding away across the floor. The shadeglass crystal flew from her grip.
Toll felt the blood pouring from his arm in gushing torrents, and knew that it was over. Even if they somehow made it out of this room alive, there would be no making it back across the city before he bled out. Callis’ face swam into focus. He was shouting something, but Toll couldn’t quite make out the words. Blackness seeped into the corners of his vision.
Then there was a ragged, terrified scream. Blearily, Toll looked up from where he lay, and saw the ruined form of the Lord Pa’tha’quen’tos, once more seated upon the remnant of its stone palanquin, which was held together by arcing streams of lightning. It hovered in place before Ortam Vermyre, who was enveloped in a field of that same fulminating energy. The stench of burning flesh was overwhelming. Even as the man struggled and writhed, Pa’tha’quen’tos raised its stubby arms high, weaving an incredibly complex series of gestures in the air. Occlesius’ shadeglass gem floated in the air in front of the creature, crackling with energy.
At first, nothing happened. Then there was a whistling shriek of tortured air. Slowly, but with gathering inevitability, a tear began to open in the world. Where the aura surrounding the Silver Shard had been that of misplaced, overlapping realities, this breach spilled only thick, all-encompassing darkness into the world. Vermyre struggled free of the web of energy, and swung his silver blade into the chest of Pa’tha’quen’tos, but the creature did not even seem to register the surely fatal blow even as blood bubbled in its wide maw and poured down its chest. Instead, they could hear a low, throaty murmuring, and it continued to craft a final spell.
Something silver-white rushed out from the crystal, and ricocheted across the room like a bouncing ball of lightning. Vermyre was dragged forwards. His hideous face began to twist and deform, flesh drawn from his bones towards the crystal.
Vermyre shrieked, and tried desperately to drag himself away, but his feet slipped on the smooth floor and he could make no progress. Toll could see the panic in his old friend’s eyes as he realised his doom. He felt no pride or delight in witnessing this. Only relief that he had, at last, earned justice for the dead of Excelsis, before the end.
The black hole was still growing now, and it seemed to drain all the light and sound from the chamber. Shev was crawling towards them, looking over her shoulder in fear at the spreading vortex. At this pace, it would soon devour them all.
In one final, desperate attempt to escape his fate, Vermyre began to hack wildly at Pa’tha’quen’tos, carving through flesh and stone. The wizened creature, somehow still alive, simply rested its hands upon the man’s chest, and with its dying breath mouthed one last arcane phrase. With one final agonised scream, Vermyre’s spirit was torn from his body, disappearing into the shadeglass gem, which flared and crackled with energy. His lifeless body crumpled and was sucked into the vortex, before Pa’tha’quen’tos reached out a stubby hand to grasp the scintillating blade of the Silver Shard. Its flesh began to bubble and boil away, but the creature seemed to ignore the pain. The spreading orb of oblivion now enveloped the raised dais entirely. Pa’tha’quen’tos released his hold upon the floating crystal containing whatever remained of Vermyre’s essence, which followed after the man’s corpse.
Then, his great eyes closed and the Silver Shard clutched to his chest, the master of Xoantica was drained into the vortex of devouring nothingness, his body tumbling and whirling away into the distance.
‘To the void with you, Vermyre,’ Toll whispered, and then began his own journey into darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The rift continued to widen, tendrils of antimatter reaching out to steal the life and colour from the world. Enormous masonry chunks dropped from the ceiling to smash upon the chamber floor, sending up great explosions of dust and shards of splintered stone.
‘Toll! Toll!’ Callis was shouting, slapping the oblivious witch hunter about the face in an attempt to bring him out of his stupor. Shev put a hand to the prone man’s chest. She felt him breathing, but it was shallow and faint. She did not think he had more than a few minutes to live.
‘Armand,’ she shouted, gripping the soldier by his shoulders and shaking him. He stared at her, blood and dust smeared all across his face. ‘We have to get out of here. Or we’ll all follow Vermyre into oblivion.’
He nodded, and stooped to gather Toll in his arms, straining as he hefted the comatose man onto his back. They struggled to move, for each of them now felt the pull of the widening vortex, reaching out to tug at their bodies.
Shev thought to say that they should leave Toll here, but Callis had a look of formidable determination about him, and she knew he would countenance no such thing. Together they half-ran, half-staggered to the stairway, and began to descend. The ground shook beneath their feet. Shev had lived through an earthquake before, and she knew that they had almost no chance of outrunning the blast radius. The sole comfort she found was that she felt awake and focused in a way that she had not in all the time they had spent in Xoantica. Something had changed, as if she had just awoken for the very first time. That sense of crushing doom she had felt ever since she had followed Vermyre into the depths of the forgotten city had mercifully ceased. Where before the journey up this staircase had felt like some kind of purgatorial nightmare, now she could see all the way down to the entrance hall far below. It was littered with corpses, and there was no movement down ther
e.
They were perhaps a third of the way down the spiralling stairway when there was another, fiercer tremor that sent them skidding to their knees. Shev looked up and saw the black orb of nothingness stretching out to consume the apex of the tower. The arched roof tore away into the void, and Shev saw the inky blackness of the rift meet a slate-grey sky, its all-consuming darkness seeping into the world like oil into water.
Callis helped her upright, somehow still managing to drag Toll’s body alongside him.
They bounded down the steps as fast as their aching legs allowed, bursting out into the charnel pit that was the entranceway. Shev noticed that there were none of the saurian creatures amongst the dead. Apparently, they had left Xoantica alongside their master. Neither could she see the bulky armour of Admiral Bengtsson, or the night-black leathers of Arika Zenthe – both of whom, according to Callis, had been left to guard the stairway – though there was no time to search the scene.
At last they burst out into open air, racing down the steps while the building came apart behind him. The shadow of the vortex swept across the plaza, bathing the square in darkness, but beyond she could see the city stretching away into the distance – and beyond that, the mist-wreathed mountains of the Fatescars.
‘Get a godsdamned move on!’ came a voice from far ahead, barely loud enough to be heard over the roar of the collapsing city. It was Zenthe, on the far side of the plaza, leaning heavily on Bengtsson, clutching her side in a manner that indicated she had taken a nasty wound.
They raced across the open ground and reached the battered pair of shipmasters, who were covered in blood and grime. Bengtsson’s helm had been marked by a vicious diagonal cut that had almost breached his armour, and he was favouring one leg and breathing heavily. Zenthe was grimacing in pain, and it looked as though she had been run through or pierced by an arrow, for her coat was soaked in blood and her breathing was wet and ragged.
‘I think that our fine fellowship now comes to an end,’ she growled. ‘There’s no way we’re outrunning death this time.’
Bengtsson grunted, a sound that might have been affirmation. Zenthe was right, Shev knew. She turned, and gazed up at the orb of nothingness, which had grown to envelop the domed hall. As they watched, the structure disintegrated, clouds of bricks and shattered glass draining away into the hungry void, the great marble face of the building cracking and crumbling. With a thunderous explosion, the front of the building came apart, and the entire structure was swallowed up into darkness. Still not sated, the crackling tendrils of the void stretched out, seeking fresh sustenance.
‘There’s no escaping that,’ panted Callis. His hands were trembling with exhaustion. Shev had no idea how the man had managed to haul his companion so far without pausing for breath.
‘No,’ she whispered, and sat down on the flagstones, sighing as she massaged her aching muscles. Even now the rift was eating up the distance between them, ripping tiles and stones from the plaza.
‘You know, since I joined your one-armed master’s mad crusade of vengeance I’ve lost my ship, been hurled in the dungeons, been stabbed by a bird-faced mutant and now I’m about to be swallowed up by the abyss,’ said Zenthe, spitting up a mouthful of blood. ‘Oblivion will come as something of a relief.’
‘Well, if you’re all so intent on dying along with this city mayhap I should leave upon the Indefatigable by myself,’ said Bengtsson.
They turned as one to stare at him, and he jerked an armoured hand towards the mountains. There, sailing out of the mist amidst a cloud of thick, grey smoke, was the admiral’s flagship, making straight for their position.
‘If there’s one thing you can rely upon, it’s that my crew will want to ensure my survival,’ said Bengtsson.
‘Wonder if my own sea-wolves would be so loyal,’ muttered Zenthe.
‘Loyalty?’ asked the admiral, as if he had never heard the word before. ‘No, no, no, my dear Captain Zenthe. Pragmatism is a far more reliable motivator. I earned command by mehret, and every soul aboard that vessel knows that their profits would sink like a harpooned tuvahsk without me leading them.’
He reached into his belt and withdrew a small, brass-handled pistol with a wide, stubby barrel. He raised it into the air and fired, and a flare of bright red raced into the air and detonated in a shower of sparks.
Closer and closer the airship came. They ran to meet it while the rift widened and stretched behind them, gaining with every passing moment.
The great, bulbous shape of the duardin ironclad dropped out of the clouds, turning broadside in the middle of the central thoroughfare. Shev saw armoured figures with those familiar sphere-shaped backpacks dashing across the deck, launching themselves over the side and soaring out towards their band. They gathered Bengtsson and Zenthe first, grasping the pair under the arms and lifting them into the air. Then, like a flock of oversized insects, the rest of the engineers descended. Shev felt rough hands grasp her by the shoulders, and then her feet left the ground, and she was kicking empty air as she rose up towards the deck of the Indefatigable.
As she soared over the deck, the grip released, and the studded iron surface rushed up with fearsome speed. She hit hard, but turned the fall into an awkward roll.
‘Pull away,’ Bengtsson ordered, slapping away the attention of his crew, who were checking him for signs of injury.
The engine-spheres flared, and the ship’s iron hull began to creak and groan as the great vessel swung back, away from the growing disaster enveloping Xoantica. Callis and Toll were dropped to the deck, the latter only slightly more carefully than Shev had been. She rushed over and checked Toll’s pulse. Astonishingly, there was a faint beat there, though the man’s flesh was cold and dry as a corpse.
‘He needs a healer,’ said Callis, who was slumped against the gunwale, breathing heavily, too exhausted to move.
Shev dragged herself to the rail of the ship and slumped against it as the crew of the Indefatigable rushed to their stations, and the huge sky-ship slowly began to haul itself away from the dying city. The vortex was now a howling globe that dominated the skyline all around them, and its tendrils crackled and grasped empty air mere yards from the gleaming hull of the Ironclad. She could feel their monstrous pull tugging at her flesh, sending her hair whipping over her head. She gripped the edge of the gunwale so hard it hurt. The engine-spheres above protested loudly, and as one of the tendrils of darkness brushed against the dull brass surface it loosed panels and rune-etched vents, which tumbled away into nothingness. The city itself was crumbling apart all around, buildings collapsing in on themselves, streets dissolving brick by brick. Snaking rivers of shattered marble and gold trailed to the mouth of the great maw. The Indefatigable pitched terribly, sending duardin crew stumbling and sliding across its deck, and for an awful moment she thought that it was going to tip over and spill them all out into empty space.
But then the spherical engine roared with fresh power, and the great vessel began to pull away towards the mountains, rising into the sky and away from the dead city of Xoantica.
The growing vortex began to split the entire floating mountain apart. Enormous splinters ran through the bedrock of the island. Great valleys were torn open in the ragged earth, and towering shelves of rock bent and gave way under the unthinkable pressure. The majestic stone face upon which the lost city had sheltered began to morph and leer as it was rent asunder. Now the sky-vortex was bigger than Xoantica itself, a nucleus of pure darkness at the heart of the mountain, still feeding upon the raw matter of existence. There was a crack louder than a myriad of thunderstorms discharging at once, and the floating island split apart, the lower half of the titanic face sundered as if it had been struck by an enormous axe. The stern brow and forehead of the mountain, which made up the crown of the floating island, were swallowed into the void.
It was as if this final act of consumption finally sated the black hole’s voraciou
s hunger. The orb of destruction began to flicker and collapse, falling in upon itself. A shockwave rushed out to buffet the Indefatigable, spinning the ship about. Steel plates groaned as the helmsman struggled to compensate for the buffeting winds. The lower half of the mountain collapsed, whatever magic held its brethren up entirely obliterated by the unthinkable eruption that had occurred. It fell from the skies in terrible slow motion and struck the sweeping lowland jungle below. An enormous cloud of dust spread as a secondary shockwave was unleashed, flattening trees and sending rippling tidal waves arcing out to sea. Shev watched in horror as the waters of the Taloncoast churned into a boiling tsunami and swept across the land, to the horizon and beyond.
Callis leaned alongside Shev, his bloodied face pressed against the cold metal. He whistled softly as the devastation unfurled beneath them.
‘That’s something you don’t see every day,’ he muttered.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Four months later…
Callis awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright, his heart hammering in his chest. The sheets were damp with sweat even though a brisk breeze was drifting through the open window. Judging by the lilac glow that filled the room, it was some time in the early morning. He could already hear the clatter of carts passing along the cobbled road outside, and the shouts of tradesmen on their way to the Circle Market. He blinked sleep out of his eyes, and tried to banish the image that had dragged him into wakefulness.
A single, yellow eye, wreathed in fire and madness, staring into his very soul. He wondered if the terror of that moment would ever leave him. Worse still, he wondered if he would ever stop imagining what horror had been obscured at the heart of that mist-shrouded chamber. The daemon’s true form…
‘Nightmares again?’ said Shev.